Secrets She Left Behind by Diane Chamberlain is a stunning work of fiction revolving around the viewpoints of four main characters Sara, Keith, Maggie and Andy. Maggie, Keith, and Andy are all related because years ago Sara, who is Keith’s mother, had an affair with Maggie’s father. Maggie set a fire which killed three people and left her half-brother Keith badly burned and extremely bitter.
Secrets She Left Behind is the story of two families whose fates are inextricably wound together. Burn victim Keith is hooked on pain pills and mixing them with alcohol in a family with a history of alcohol abuse. His mother is missing, but where is she and what happened to her? Why didn’t she take Keith with her? Keith’s half-sister Maggie wants to try to make things better for him but can’t even face him and the two siblings have serious issues they have to overcome in order to begin finding some common ground. Is it even possible for them to overcome the pain and terror in their way?
Add into this mix a stranger who arrives in town and befriends both Maggie and Keith. To Keith she claims to hate Maggie, but to Maggie she becomes the only friend she has in a town turned against her. Who is she lying to and why?
What follows is an excerpt from the book written from Maggie’s perspective on the first visit to her court ordered psychiatrist:
“‘What’s it been like for you since Monday?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Being out of prison? Being free?’
‘Okay.’
He waited for me to go on. I stared out the window with its view of the parking lot until my eyes watered. Then I looked at my ragged fingernails. He wasn’t going to talk until I did. It was like a standoff. A war, but I had the feeling he could take the silence longer than I could.
‘The reporters are everywhere,’ I said finally.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘What’s that like for you?’
I shrugged. ‘I hate it,’ I said. ‘It’s not fair to my family, either. If it was just me…well, that’s bad enough, but I get why they have to be after me. I’m the story. But I want them to leave my brother and mother alone.’…
…I thought again about Andy walking to the school bus that morning, maybe trying to make sense of the reporters and their questions. Struggling to figure out how to answer them. Before I knew what was happening, my eyes filled with tears.
‘You love your family very much,’ Dr. Jakes said.
I nodded.
He motioned to the box of tissues on the table next to my chair and I took one and pressed it to my eyes. I did not want to cry here. I didn’t want to give this old sloppy fat man the satisfaction of making me cry. But suddenly, that was all I could do. I cried, and he let me. That’s about all I did for the rest of the session. He said that was okay. Good, even. I had a lot of pain inside me, he said, and we’d have plenty of time together to talk it all through.”
Since reading Secrets She Left Behind I’ve discovered the story of these two families actually began in Chamerlain’s Before the Storm, which I’ve never read. I found the Secrets She Left Behind to be more than capable of standing alone as a novel. I will read Before the Storm simply because I fell in love with the characters in Secrets She Left Behind and am so glad there is more to their story, even if it occurred prior to this novel.
Secrets She Left Behind by Diane Chamberlain, copyright 2009 Diane Chamberlain, published by MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada, M3B 3K9, ISBN 978-1-61523-062-4
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