Carol Dunbar

This is one of those rare books that will mesmerize you with lyrical prose and yet also keep you turning the pages. Oh, and be ready, because here's a promise: it will make you cry, too. I wouldn't recommend taking it on a plane unless you're cool with public sobbing.

The story of Elsa losing her center and then finding her way back is both heartbreaking and hopeful. It's not to sort of book that would ever have a sequel, but it will leave you wishing you could peek back in on the characters in a few years, to visit them and make sure they're doing well. Hester, in particular. It's also the kind of book (similar to Peace Like a River and Mama Day, for me) that inspires me to always keep a few extra copies so I can give them away to people I know will treasure the story.… (mehr)

For readers of Dunbar's first novel, The Net Beneath Us, it will be no surprise to encounter in A Winter's Rime a strong female protagonist who is most at home in nature and who finds herself in a situation that is going to take all her personal strength - plus developing some new personal strength - to work her way out. But that's pretty much where the similarities between Elsa and Mallory, A Winter's Rime's hero, end. Mallory has survived a traumatic childhood and mostly held it together, but after completing her commitment to the military, in the civilian world, she finds herself unmoored - that is, until Shay, a terrified, abused, gravely injured young woman, stumbles out of the forest one evening. Mallory finds herself irresistibly drawn to help Shay, and that sets her on a path that is lined with the screaming demons of her own history of trauma.

Trauma often begets trauma, and Mallory was born into a family of that exact horrific tradition. Through much of her life, she has simply isolated herself in order to avoid passing her trauma on, but once she decides that she will help Shay, she has no choice but to confront her own past as well. It's a harrowing journey, but along the way, I couldn't help rooting for Mallorie, even as I was yelling at her, like the protagonist in a horror movie who goes down the dark stairwell to investigate a noise, "No, that's a terrible decision! What are you doing?" She's a kind and charming character, though, even when she's making choices that aren't her best, a situation that is beautifully and hilariously illustrated during my favorite parts of the book, Mallory's conversations with Noah, her colleague on her overnight shifts at a 24-hour station and convenience store. Noah has Asperger's, but more importantly, he has the willingness and clear-eyed candor to be the only person in Mallory's life to hold up the mirror she desperately needs. Also, he has the best lines and provides the perfect comic relief amidst the book's deeply serious and important search for the answer to the question, Is it possible to end your own cycle of trauma, and if so, how?… (mehr)