Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
It is a testament to Jacquelyn Mitchard's considerable writing skills that a reader gets sucked into Cage of Stars despite not believing much about the story she tells.
Mitchard, who was vaulted into the Oprah-sphere of best-sellerdom with her 1996 tale of a long-missing child's return in The Deep End of the Ocean, again takes on a family in crisis in her newest book.
Veronica "Ronnie" Swan narrates her story, and this is where the credibility challenge arises.
Ronnie comes off as a teenager like no other. At 17, she is preternaturally mature, self-aware, articulate -- and a strategic planner.
When Ronnie was just 12, she was living an idyllic Mormon childhood in Dragon Creek, Utah, with her artist mother, teacher father and two young sisters.
Ronnie is left home alone one afternoon to watch Becky and Ruthie.
A game of hide-and-seek turns horrific when a young man with schizophrenia stumbles into their yard and slashes the young girls' throats.
From the first page of the novel, the reader knows a confrontation between Ronnie and her sisters' killer is coming.
And after a start that is as painful to read as it is to imagine two young girls in coffins, the rest of the story is as alluring as reading someone else's diary, however chaste. (She's a Mormon, people.)
The novel heartachingly evokes the family's descent into grief: Father London grows gaunt as he hikes the mountains during sleepless nights. Mother Cressida languishes in bed, missing Ronnie's birthdays and sleepwalking through life.
But when the boy whose descent into madness shattered the Swan family is sentenced to time in a prison for the criminally insane, the initially stunned parents slowly find forgiveness through their faith.
A furious Ronnie refuses to meet with the killer, Scott Early, and sets in motion a plan to take from him what he stole from her.
Until this, Ronnie's sole act of defiance has been sneaking off to drink (horrors!) Earl Grey tea, caffeine being verboten for Mormons.
What's lovely about this book is its depiction of faith in everyday terms, how beliefs -- in this case, Mormonism -- shape a family's life.
It's similar to the way Jan Karon's beloved Mitford series makes God a part of daily life with self-deprecating humor and without being too preachy about it.
The wrap-up is tidy and somewhat saccharine, but after what this girl has been through, she deserves some happiness.
Cage of Stars
By Jacquelyn Mitchard
Warner Books, 289 pages, $24.95
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
