THAT YOU REMEMBER

A woman discovers secrets about her father’s past in an Appalachian mining town in Reddy’s novel.

In 2019, Aleena Rowan is sifting through the belongings of her recently deceased father, a businessman who was “always gone” and a “mystery” to her. She finds a strange scrawl of his writing repeating the name “Sara, Sara, Sara.” Aleena, whose husband has just left her after 20 years of marriage, realizes that this discovery has somehow “relieved some of [her] inner turmoil and fueled [her] need for more answers.” The narrative jumps forward to a couple of months later, when Aleena connects with Sara, then alternates between the details leading up to this 2019 meeting and the story of how Frank meets Sara when he comes to check out his uncle’s acquisition of the coal mine in her Kentucky hometown in 1970. Sara is 21 and living with her miner brothers when Frank, in his 30s and already married with children, arrives on the scene. The community is wary of Frank as the new “operator,” and he’s worried about his uncle’s sight-unseen purchase of what he soon discovers is a dangerously faulty mine. He and Sara become intimately involved and bond over their love of nature and their concern about the mine They both feel trapped in their lives, with Frank telling Sara he can’t leave his alcoholic wife or young children. In her search for Sara, Aleena also discovers that the town experienced a mine-related flood in 1970, killing 125 people. The narrative builds to a crescendo as that incident unfolds, with Aleena (and the reader) finally learning the fates of all involved.  

In her fiction debut, the author has written a wonderfully rich and suspenseful novel. She’s peopled the story with an engaging array of mining community characters to care about, including Sara’s family members; a Vietnam veteran miner and his pregnant, then postpartum depression–suffering wife; and a novice young miner also drawn to Sara. Reddy’s early revelation that the community will experience disaster makes for a gripping account that leaves readers anxious about which characters will survive. The author, who has a background as a science writer, also provides documentarylike detail about coal mining, sharing the specifics of “tipple” and the industry’s safety and environmental hazards, including references to the similarly horrific 1966 Aberfan disaster in Wales. Reddy effectively positions Aleena’s growing understanding of her father, and of the impact that her mother’s alcoholism had on her and her family, as the narrative arcs of the novel. She creates interest and sympathy for secondary characters, with Aleena’s mother, Allicia, a former model now ensconced in suburbia, particularly well realized. Reddy’s depiction of Frank’s 1970 angst, however, pulls hardest at the heartstrings: “Life was a series of problems that you had to solve,” he muses. “But all his logic, sound reason, and good judgment, what had they gotten him? A job he hated and an alcoholic wife.”

A page-turner of impending doom that makes time for the complexities of human relationships.