Claire Matturro

A novel that sets out to make a political point runs the risk of straying into the polemical—less novel, more essay. That’s a fate that co-authors Claire Matturro and Penny Koepsel avoid in their engrossing new crime thriller, Wayward Girls. A dedication reveals the novel was “inspired by the well-documented horrors” at a wilderness school in Texas, Artesia Hall, where a female student died in 1972, and by Florida’s infamous Dozier School for Boys, which finally closed in 2011. The result is a highly readable book with a strong sense of purpose.
The story begins in the present day, when the adult Jude receives a call from an old friend, known as Farmer Max, who tells her that her old boarding school, Talbot Hall for Girls, is about to be demolished. Jude had a best friend and fellow-sufferer there—Camille—whom she’s estranged from. Farmer Max calls Camille too.
Jude is now an artist, making a reasonable living with sales of her paintings; Camille is a psychotherapist and college professor. Both women decide to make the trip to central Florida to witness the destruction. Camille digs out her journals, and the impressions of her fifteen-year-old self lead you into the girls’ difficult past.
The school is a giant, gothic-looking building with fake turrets and a tower in the middle of nowhere. What terrible acts brought Jude and Camille to Talbot? Camille skipped school to spend time with her boyfriend (she’s still a virgin). Her psychotherapist, Dr. Hedstrom recommended Talbot, and her parents were happy to have her out of the house. Jude’s therapist reported she had the “potential for violence” after Jude, provoked, shoved her. A “more structured environment” was recommended for them both.
Not that the Talbot students are angels. Warnings pass among them not to trust their housemother, Mrs. Dalfour, or Jack, the young handyman who spies on them. At least Camille is away from creepy Dr. Hedstrom. But he takes a part-time position at the school and keeps trying to insinuate himself into Camille’s life. Another new girl enters the mix: Wanda Ann Mosby, the wildest of them—loud and brash and undereducated.
When some of Camille’s possessions go missing, she makes a big deal of it, but then they reappear. She doesn’t know what to think, but the other girls do. They think she’s crazy, and you can’t believe anything she says. A perfect gaslight.
The reconstruction of Camille and Jude’s teen years occupies most of the story, but there are flash forwards to today as they meet at Farmer Max’s bar and juke joint. Authors Matturro and Koepsel provide hints about the final tragedy all those years before—a fire, an allegation of murder—and it’s uncertain whether Camille and Jude can get past all that to reconnect.
Matturro and Koepsel have plotted the tale well, with high stakes and believable motives. The central Florida location—hot, humid, buggy—seems the very definition of a neglected, out-of-sight place where bad things can happen unimpeded. The authors falter a bit in characterization, without the depth you might want, and Dr. Hedstrom, especially, is too transparently awful. Nevertheless, I grew to care about Jude and Camille, about Wanda and Farmer Max and how they might escape Talbot’s influence.
The ability of (mostly) men to commit their unruly wives to a mental hospital in the 1800s is fairly well known. The cases that inspired Matturro and Koepsel show the continued vulnerability of young people, especially girls and women, to exploitation. And if you think society has finally extinguished the desire to control women through drastic means, you haven’t been following the sad saga of Britney Spears.… (mehr)

I thank Red Adept Publishing for providing a copy of The Smuggler's Daughter by Claire Matturro, in exchange for an honest review.

The structure of The Smuggler’s Daughter created an experience that was like reading two novelettes. I begin to genuinely enjoy the story only after I got past the extended backstory.

Matturro introduces Kittie Pettus and her two best friends in a brief prologue set in summer. 1959. The focus then shifts to the spring of 1992. Two detectives are investigating the murder of a state attorney and a local attorney. Coincidentally, a new attorney hired by the state attorney is injured in a hit-and-run accident while bicycling, and a community activist is run off the road and killed. The relation to the introduction is nebulous.

The focus then moves to an extended backstory, set in 1972, and the murder of a young man and woman by drug smugglers. This longish flashback kills the forward movement of the plot. The actions that occur are somewhat interesting, but the stories feature different characters. As with most flashbacks, I experienced the sixty-page retrospective as more like something I had to get through than something I enjoyed.

Following this detour, the focus returns to the summer of 1992, where the book concludes. Gradually working the events of 1972 into the 1992 narrative in a series of brief flashbacks would have been less disruptive.

It takes an effort to stick with this book, but the effort is worth it. The author meshes the characters introduced in 1959, 1972, and 1992 and provides a satisfying explanation of the puzzling events. Nevertheless, the conclusion left important issues unresolved. I suspect the author was reaching for an artistic ending rather than a “happy ever after” cliché, but the decision left me with a sense of incompleteness and disappointment.… (mehr)

This book was a solid 4 for me until about 1/2 way through, and then I'm afraid it fell off for me. I loved the premise of the story about how a crime committed 20 years before impacts the lives of the people who were involved in that crime 20 years ago. Kate (Kitty) was there for both time frames, but in 1972 she was 18 years old, living without her mother who had died a few years before, and her drug-smuggling father Tank.who was such a surprise in the book Tank knows he's doing something illegal smuggling marijuana in the Florida panhandle, but his motivation is to make money so that his daughter can go to college. He's probably the most likeable drug smuggler you'll every meet. He know he is dying from lung cancer when he forces Kitty to leave and to take the money he has saved for her and go make a life for herself elsewhere. On her way out of town, Kitty catches the tail-end of a drug deal that went horribly wrong, and then hightails it out of there as soon as she sees what has happened. We meet her again 20 years later where she is a qualified research librarian with a cop for a boyfriend. Then lawyers start getting killed in her hometown, and Kate knows that it has everything to do with what happened 20 years ago in her old hometown. This book had me riveted up to this point. Then the plot seems to fall down a bit and things appear to happen haphazardly and the tight plot disappears into a shambling mess that just seems jammed together to get a whole bunch of action in before the book ends. Another thing that downgraded if for me is the unresolved ending. I received an early review copy of this book from the publisher (Red Adept Publishing) in return for an honest review, and I'd like to thank them for giving me the opportunity to read it. The book would be enjoyed by anyone that enjoys a quick and suspenseful read with a bit of a twisty plot.… (mehr)

Thank you to Red Adept Publishing and Library Thing for giving me an advance copy of this book. Set in the Florida Panhandle, the novel evoked a strong sense of place, and the author did a good job of portraying the police detective characters.
I had trouble getting into the story because it jumps around in time, introduces a lot of characters, and then jumps to another time with different characters. It is told from multiple viewpoints.
In the most recent time period, 1992, two lawyers are murdered and another man is mysteriously run off the road, where he abandons his car, takes off into the swamp, and dies from a snake bite. Ray and Luke, the detectives investigating the cases, are certain there must be a connection.
Kate Garcia, Ray's girlfriend, works as a librarian and remembers both lawyers had recently looked at the same microfiche article about an unsolved murder that took place 20 years earlier. She's in no hurry to share this information with the police, however.
I was slow to figure out that Kate Garcia and Kitty Pettus (from the 1959 Prologue) are the same person. Her best friends from the Prologue, Nicky and CeCe, are now estranged, but we don't know why.
Almost midway through the book, we get a long flashback from 1972, about Nicky's involvement with drug smuggling, along with Kitty's dying father, Tank, and a number of other thugs. Bobby, the ringleader, lusts after Kitty, much to the chagrin of Nicky and Tank. Kitty and CeCe were only peripherally involved in the operation, but the men sometimes used Kitty's van to transport their contraband. One night, a marijuana deal goes terribly wrong, resulting in the murders of four people; two bodies were stashed in Kitty's van and driven into a sinkhole.
Apparently, the group all went their separate ways after that incident.
But after the 1992 lawyer murders, the 1972 tragedy is revived, and Kate/Kitty walks straight into a trap.
Except for a few parts where I had to suspend disbelief, this was a compelling mystery.… (mehr)