Review: Blue Vengeance

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Blue Vengeance

Alison Preston, 253 pages

Signature Editions

www.signature-editions.com $16.95

Blue Vengeance is the latest in Alison Preston’s Norwood Flats mysteries. The imagery on the cover of the book pulls at you right away, especially when you see the image of a young girl lying dead in the water. It makes you wonder, what happened and ask yourself why is this girl dead?

Blue Vengeance opens in 1964 when troubled teenager Cookie is found dead in the Red River. Cookie was a troubled teenager who had been battling bulimia and various other demons, that saw her become distant towards her family before her untimely death.

Your heartstrings are pulled when Cookie’s younger brother Danny stands at the graveyard with his family while burying his sister and as they stand in the rain; he recalls that his sister doesn’t like rain. He turns to his aunt and says, “Cookie doesn’t like the rain.”(pg.1) “Hurry up” he said “We can’t be dropping her down into a lake.” (pg.1)

Blue Vengeance is not so much about grief, loss and coping but also about vengeance for a young soul lost. Danny holds Cookie’s gym teacher responsible for her death because not long before his sister died, he witnessed Mrs. Hartley being mean to Cookie and calling her names in front of her classmates.

Danny and Cookie’s best friend Janine conceive a plot over the course of the summer and fall to kill Mrs. Hartley. Along with dealing with his sister’s death, Danny also has to deal with having a mother who is not capable of helping him through his grief due to her own illnesses and grief. We see Danny grow up faster than his thirteen years as we see the role of parent and child reversed with Danny undertaking household chores and cooking to help his mother out.

Essentially this freedom, allows him to entertain thoughts of seeking vengeance for his sister’s death and not really caring about the outcome.

(Christine Smith (McFarlane)

Previously published in Broken Pencil Magazine

P.S. Please note that once a month I will be posting non Native literary works