Sheri Reynolds’ new novel is rich in feeling for life’s troubles and gray areas
Many readers will see their own lives in the latest novel by Sheri Reynolds, “The Tender Grave.” Their experiences probably won’t mirror those of the main characters, among them a same-sex couple struggling with infertility, a substance-abusing teenage girl and an unstable religious zealot.
But the power of Reynolds’ work is that readers will likely be intimately familiar with the themes that undergird the story: the futility of running away from problems, disappointment in unwanted outcomes, frustration with decisions that have no easy answer.
“The Tender Grave” is Reynolds’ seventh published novel. The plot revolves around 17-year-old Dori Baxter’s unexpected arrival at the Virginia home of a half-sister more than twice her age. The encounter is the first time they’ve met.
The story begins with an ominous scene. Dori’s mother, driving a bald-tired jalopy, drops her off at a bus station, gives her what little cash she has and issues a firm command: Go. Dori has just committed an unspeakable act, participating in the assault of a gay classmate, whose condition is grave.
With nowhere else to go, Dori takes a bus to Virginia’s Eastern Shore, but it’s a long shot. She has only an old address for her sister, Teresa, who hasn’t spoken to her mother in 12 years.
The plot is an original and engaging idea, with shadings of a Robinsonade, the genre of castaway stories inspired by “Robinson Crusoe,” where the protagonist ends up in a strange land full of danger, adventure and ample time for self-reflection.
But if Dori is seeking escape, stability and rebirth, what she finds is a small family wary of her arrival and navigating their own challenges. The sisters’ only thing in common at first glance seems to be their mother, a religious fundamentalist who has failed both daughters.
Religious fundamentalism is a theme that Reynolds has visited in previous work, most notably in her New York Times bestseller “The Rapture of Canaan.” Also as in previous work, she delivers the narrative in prose that is admirably unpretentious.
With that spare writing style, Reynolds delivers rich details and deep characters. Dori’s arrival, for instance, forces Teresa to reflect on her difficult childhood. “Until she was older, she didn’t understand that all mothers didn’t throw oranges from the fruit bowl when they got frustrated or rush out of the house sobbing and disappear into the woods for hours at a time.”
Reynolds also weaves in common experiences, such as the anguish of ushering a sick companion animal through its last few weeks of life.
The setting is likewise well-constructed. Tidewater residents will recognize the passing glimpses of common interactions with land and sea. During a swim at the Eastern Shore’s seaside, Dori “lost a shoe, but luckily it floated, so she found it again. The rubber soles were sliced from all the broken shells along the sandy floor, but they were better than nothing.”
This is a place that Reynolds knows well. She is Department of English chairperson at Old Dominion University and lives with her wife in the Eastern Shore’s southernmost town, Cape Charles, which happens to resemble the unnamed “bayside fishing village” and onetime railroad and ferry town where much of “The Tender Grave” takes place.
Perhaps Reynolds’ most compelling achievement with this novel is the way the reader is drawn into sympathizing with someone who has committed a violent crime worthy of prison. “The Tender Grave” invites reflections on redemption and personal responsibility.
Among the novel’s very few shortcomings are a handful of places where the dialogue seems to be out of sync with the character — as when a quirky 7-year-old speaks of the ability to “judge potential” of baby chicks and says police are “working some leads” on a break-in (that it turns out Dori has committed).
And what would seem like an expected and intuitive climactic confrontation between the perpetrator of a hate crime and her lesbian sister never really arrives. But that turn of events, too, could be received as insight rather than omission — that for so many of us, life has veered this way and that, sometimes pleasantly and sometimes not, leaving in its wake a host of unresolved episodes that have made us who we are today.