The More You Read

The Drowning Tree followed along similar paths as Carol Goodman’s other books.  It is based at an all girls school, in this case Penrose College, and it leans heavily on mythology, literature and art.  Carol Goodman uses a lot of references to mythology to move her story along.  She writes mystery novels that are complex and thorough and I am always interested in what will happen next.

The main character of this book is Juno McKay.  She attended Penrose College and fifteen years later is still living near the school and works doing stained glass restoration.  She has not been very involved with her college, or at least her graduating class, due to how people talk about traumatic things that happened in the past and she does not want to be reminded.  Juno’s ex-husband tried to drown her and her baby fifteen years before, and has been in an institution for the mentally ill ever since.  Juno has not seen him or had contact with him during that time, even though the institution is near the college.

Juno is brought back into the folds of her class through a reunion where her best friend, Christine, gives a lecture about a stained glass window that Juno’s company is going to restore.  Christine had done a lot of research and provides some previously unknown details about the college founders and the figure in the window.  A week later Christine is found dead in the nearby river.  Juno works to uncover the trail that Christine’s research led her on.

This was a very interesting book that kept me up at night reading to see what would happen next.  Again, it does have a lot of references to literature and mythology so if you are not interested in those things it might not be the book for you.  However it is different than any other books that I have read and I really enjoyed it.

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Carol Goodman, Fiction