GOD BLESS THE CHILD

Heinrich’s novel is a dark tale of family dysfunction and its consequences.

Mary Kline, the daughter of the owner of the town department store, has always been on the heavy side. A chubby child, she grows into an obese teenager, so large that her mother assumes the task of sewing her wardrobe so that, despite her size, she can have clothing in the latest styles and finest fabrics. Her parents cater to her whims and desires, providing everything but the one thing she truly needs: displays of love and affection. Mary is a misfit at high school. The guidance counselor, June Essex, asks her to befriend another young girl, Pearl Davis, who is new in town. Pearl is shy and has an intellectual disability. Her parents are deceased, so Pearl lives with her older brothers; she, too, is doomed to be an outcast in the high school jungle. During the summer after junior year, an older boy, James Pullman, the preacher’s son, notices Pearl’s lovely figure and he takes advantage of the girl. That fall, it becomes obvious that Pearl is pregnant. Mary describes what happens next: “James Pullman had finished his dirty work. It was time for the Klines to swoop in for a rescue that was just as sinister.” Worried that their ungainly daughter will never be able to create a family of her own, the Klines arrange to take in Pearl and raise her baby, Elizabeth, as their own. Both mother and child are placed in Mary’s care. Heinrich’s disturbing novel opens near the end of the story, with Mary Kline indulging in her two self-soothing obsessions: sewing and eating. Jumping back in time, the tale plays out in addictive alternating first-person chapters, individually narrated by a vivid collection of primary and pivotal secondary characters. Mary, who frequently refers to herself in the third person and by her full name when she speaks to Pearl and Elizabeth, is an original and compelling protagonist. She carries a painful secret that she has blocked from her memory, which is not revealed to readers until the novel’s closing chapters—an original sin that results in subsequent generations of dysfunction.

 An engaging and dramatic (if often depressing) journey through family strife.