SCARS of the heart
LOO LOVES AND RESPECTS HER WIDOWER DAD, BUT DOES SHE TRULY KNOW WHO HE IS?
This intriguing novel is a gritty coming-ofage story. It’s about a teenager, Loo Hawley, whose life has been coloured by her father’s criminal past. She learnt to shoot a gun at the age of 12 and has spent her unconventional childhood moving from place to place, living in motels and leaving in a hurry, the only possessions that really matter a few mementoes of her dead mother.
Finally, in a bid to give
Loo a more normal life, Samuel moves back to his late wife’s hometown in Massachusetts. He gets work as a fisherman and she struggles to fit in with other children, takes her first job and finds a boyfriend. It is here she begins to wonder about her life and what happened before she was born – what was her mother’s story and who is her father exactly? Some people judge him harshly and tell
Loo he isn’t a good man. Yet, despite his roughness, it is clear he cares for her beyond anything and he has always been her hero.
At heart, this is a fatherdaughter love story but one laced with guns and tragedy. Samuel has 12 scars on his body, all of them bullet holes and we learn how he got each one. We also begin to understand how he will never be free of his dark past. Eventually, trouble will come back to haunt them both.
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley is a fairly literary book, carefully crafted, and with references to myth and legend woven through the story. I struggled with its darkness and violence at times. For me, it wasn’t an urgent page-turner of a novel. But I liked the way it took me far beyond my own world and made me walk in someone else’s shoes. It got me thinking about outlaws and outsiders, about how good people come in unexpected packages and lives are almost always more complicated than they seem at first sight.
If you’re looking for an easy, relaxing read for a rainy Sunday afternoon, then this book isn’t it. But if you like to be challenged and you love writing that is subtly brilliant, and you enjoy a story that is unexpected, complex and unsettling, then you should put this coming-of-age tale on your to-read pile.