Lost in the Forest [Paperback]

First, this confession: it was the beautiful cover of this book that first caught my eye. If ever a book was served by what lies on its cover, it is this one.

Set in the California wine country in the late 1980's, this Sue Miller novel begins in straightforward fashion with the accidental death of a man, then lets the effects of that death cascade downward to set the entire story in motion. This novel tells of fifteen-year-old Daisy and her extended family, and how the life of Daisy and her relatives is changed with the loss of Daisy's stepfather. Ill-healed wounds from the recent past are split open once more amid a plethora of present-day anguish. Daisy and all around her are, to state it simply, changed.

If Lost In The Forest were merely this, it would be an entirely different type of novel, but as most everyone now knows, Miller turns it into something more. What she accomplishes via Daisy's eventual erotic affair with a man nearly forty years her elder, is to explicitly turn out the most daring, taboo-breaking work of fiction since Lolita half a century ago. I avidly followed along behind Daisy in her descent into what is probably best described, even in 2005, as a plummet from grace.

I really feel uncomfortable saying more than this, because there is much lying under the surface of this work and I am afraid of giving details away when you can gain so much more by discovering this story for yourself. What I will conclude with here is that Miller, in this tale of pain and reaction, coming of age, and the making of mistakes, has given us her best work since Family Pictures, and showed not only courage in the story she created, but in making this barely more than a novella, when so many other writers might have yielded to the temptation to bloat this by an unnecessary couple hundred extra pages.

Time after time, Sue Miller has proven herself a master storyteller, reaching into the heart of a tale and exposing the complicated reactions of a family in crisis. As in Lost in the Forest, no one is ever prepared for tragedy, yet it strikes randomly, altering lives in the wake of grief.

For Eva and her three children, tragedy strikes on a quiet afternoon walk with her second husband, John, and their small son, Theo. John is suddenly struck by a car, killed instantly in front of wife and child. Mark, Eva's first husband, receives a call from seventeen-year old Emily, requesting that he come and get the children, but she doesn't tell him the reason until after they are safely ensconced at his house. Three-year old Theo may be too young to understand, but middle child, almost-fifteen-year old Daisy was particularly close to her stepfather, a gentle man who took the time to attend to her emotional needs. Eva is, of course devastated.

Family and friends grope blindly through the following days in the beautiful Napa Valley wine country of the 1980's, seeking a return to some kind of normalcy and an end to their endless grief, the weight of sorrow almost a physical burden. Time passes and the family returns to a routine, but, of course, nothing is the same for any of them. Over the next few months, Mark imagines a life again with his former wife, although Eva is ambivalent, still reeling from the shocking loss of her beloved John. Aware of Eva's dilemma, Mark can't deny the fantasy that blooms in his imagination.

Emily has begun to move away from the circle of family. The world calls her to her future. Young Theo has yet to comprehend that his father has gone forever, imagining he will see him in heaven soon. Surprisingly, it is Daisy, now fifteen, who suffers the most from John`s absence, the man who had so generously taken over the fatherly role Mark unwittingly abdicated. Given to a natural quiet and isolation, the formerly gawky girl is growing into her beauty, a fact that doesn't go unnoticed by one of their circle, an older married man.

Like moth to flame, the vulnerable Daisy is seduced by the probing voice of experience, the worldly man who finds her so charming, so vulnerable. Open to his flattery, Daisy is transported into a private island of intimacy, an almost physical yearning like a healing balm for the almost fathomless grief she has endured since John's death. The terrible loss too large for her to manage, Daisy escapes into her romantic musings, stepping over the threshold of sexual maturity, still a girl but with the sensory awareness of a woman, unable to locate a moral compass for her burgeoning emotions.

Miller handles the scenes of seduction with incredible grace, perfectly capturing Daisy's innocence, vulnerability and desperate need for comfort; the author's descriptions are weighted with poignancy, a melding of curiosity and satisfaction: "She felt he offered her a new version of herself, one she carried more and more with her into real life." It is Mark and Eva's courage as parents that serves as a catalyst for Daisy's decisions about her relationship with the older man, who is actually a predator, as she will come to see years later. And it is Mark, Daisy's absentee father, who reaches out to his troubled daughter, offering her a healthy future and the promise of her youth.

From a tangled web of emotional chaos, Miller creates a family in crisis who must learn to recover, adapt and make peace with the unalterable past, anchored by the overwhelming love of parent for child and the gift of forgiveness. Luan Gaines/2005.

IMHO, this is one of Miller's better books. The characters are all ring true, and the tale is told in an interesting way.

Summary, no spoilers:

Eva and Mark had two children, named Emily and Daisy. When the girls were small, Mark has an affair, and the marriage ends.

Eva remarries John ("a nice guy"), and has a son, Theo, with him.

When the book opens, we discover that John has been killed in a car accident (he was a pedestrian), and everyone is feeling enormous grief.

The book tells the story of that grief, and how each character deals with life without John.

Mark now becomes a more vital part of the family's life, Eva deals with loneliness, and Daisy, 14 years old and the most troubled, deals with her grief, her alienation from other kids, and her burgeoning sexuality.

This is a quick read. As usual, Miller is entertaining, and in particular, in this novel she has created a realistic group of characters.

The only reservation I have is with the ending of this book. Miller's last chapter takes place well after the events of the book, and it does resolve a lot of questions as to what happens to the various characters. It is just my opinion, but I would have preferred a different ending. It was a bit of a letdown for me, and I felt like I was meeting different characters than the ones I had come to know intimately throughout the novel.

Despite this, Lost in the Forest is a very good book, and I highly recommended it.