ONCE YOU KNOW

In Van Hecke’s debut novel, a mother and daughter’s relationship is affected by repressed trauma and subsequent guilt.

The storyalternates between the lives of Colleen,a happily married mother of two, and Rachel, Colleen’s eldest daughter in her first year at Lakeview College.As the novel opens, Colleen; her husband, Derek; and their youngest daughter, Izzy, are driving to Rachel’s cello concert. They seem like a family with typical woes: Derek travels often for work, and his business requires the family to move from Chicago to Arizona and back again within a year—much to Colleen’s chagrin. In college, Rachel tries to gain some independence from her parents by getting an apartment with her best friend, Mandy; she also takes a class on the intersection of gender and violence. As she writes a research paper on the sexual abuse of children, she begins to uncover buried memories of her own sexual abuse by her father. After Rachel tells Colleen what happened to her, many years ago, they’re forced to contend with the damage that Derek has caused. Van Hecke’s novel walks a delicate line, initially depicting Derek as a sympathetic character before candidly exploring the results of his horrific behavior. For much of the novel, Colleen actually attempts to salvage her relationship with Derek and to get Rachel to do the same; however, the memories of her father’s abuse affect all aspects of Rachel’s life, including a burgeoning romantic relationship with a boy in her class. Van Hecke’s prose is most powerful when it describes Rachel’s emotional and physical trauma, and it deftly captures the dissociation that comes with post-traumatic stress disorder; for example, when the young woman’s memories surface, Van Hecke writes, “It was more like her fingers themselves remembered…raking across that couch arm.” During a particularly emotionally fraught confrontation between Colleen and Rachel, Rachel slams a door that’s said to be “like an open, screaming mouth.” In sentences such as these, the ramifications of Derek’s abuse strongly reverberate.

A searing but sensitive look at recovery from irreversible harm.