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It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found murdered in a nearby strip of woods. Unclaimed by family, the community christened her Precious Doe. When Clara and Mike learn Trecie may be involved with the same people who killed Precious Doe, Clara must choose between the stead-fast existence of loneliness and the perils of binding one’s life to another.
MacKinnon's debut offers an authentic view of an undertaker's job, but the passivity of her emotionally wounded heroinemay exasperate some readers. In Brockton,Mass., lonely Clara Marsh tends to the dead at Bartholomew Funeral Home, whose kindly owner reminds Clara of the undertaker she met as a child at her mother's funeral. When Trecie, a neglected little girl, begins hanging around the funeral parlor, Clara thinks nothing of it until a routine body pickup uncovers a stash of child pornography and Clara recognizes Trecie in a video. The ensuing investigation also points to Precious Doe, an unidentified child murdered three years earlier and whose grave Clara often visits in secret. Aided by a sensitive Irish cop, Det. Mike Sullivan, to whom she's attracted, Clara tries to unravel the mystery, even if that means confronting her own unpleasant past. Some affecting, understated prose only partially redeems the flat story line. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Each time I tug on that vessel, I think of my mother. I imagine other daughters are reminded of their dead parents whenever they hear the refrain from an old song, or feel the heft of a treasured bedtime story resting on their own child’s nightstand. My trigger is the transformation of a battered corpse back to someone familiar. I was too young when she died to remember her scent, and I have no memory of her voice. But her wake–like the accident–plays in my head like a movie reel, some frames taut and crisp, others brittle, fluttery things. Though always her face is clear: before, after, and then after again at the funeral.
I remember my grandmother’s friends clustered near the Easter lilies, whispering their doubts about my mother’s eternal salvation. My grandmother, her frayed black slip hanging just beyond the hem of her dress, bringing me to kneel on road-burned knees before the casket (don’t look!) and then hurrying me along, leaving me alone in the family room. I remember holding fast to my doll, a gift from one of my mother’s many boyfriends. He said he chose her because she resembled me. Even then I knew better. The doll was elegant and slight, with porcelain cheeks and delicate lashes, lips like my mother’s and eyes that clicked shut when I laid her beside me at night. She wore a red flamenco dress, gold earrings I once tried to pierce through my own lobes, and a parchment calling card tied to her wrist, her name in curvy script: Patrice. But what I remember best of all from that day was Mr. Mulrey, the undertaker. The mourners huddled in an adjoining room, their fingers clinging to rosary beads, their souls lashed to prayers, their drumbeat-chants vibrating within me. I ran from that room, desperate to escape, and rushed headlong into Mr. Mulrey. He was standing in the doorway of my mother’s room, filling it, appearing as bewildered as I felt. I clutched at his suit coat and he turned to me, hands worrying at his own set of beads. All of him stooped as if to avoid a raised hand: shoulders sunk, chin nearly resting on his chest, eyes buried deep beneath a low, dark brow meeting mine.
“I want to go home,” I said. I told him about my grandmother’s house, a place much like the funeral parlor with its heavy drapes and multitude of crucifixes, with long silences interrupted only by longer prayers. The way she pressed me to her bosom, suffocating with her old lady smell, vowing to protect me from my mother’s fate. I fingered the thick gauze that bound my head and asked if he’d take me to where my mother was.
He pocketed his beads then and folded my hand inside his enormous one. We walked away from the hum of mourners and stopped within a few feet of where my mother lay tucked in a lit alcove at the far end of the room. She appeared pink and rested. Her usual red lips were softened with the palest shade of coral, her pillowy bosom hidden beneath a lace collar. But there she was. With candles casting hypnotic shadows against my mother’s face, the room seemed kinder than the one I’d left earlier.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Mr. Mulrey, ushering me over to the coffin.
He allowed me to touch my mother for the first time since the accident. I stroked her hand, but it was hard and cold. So instead my fingers sought the fabric of her dress, knitting through her lace cuff as I spoke.
“I was sleeping when we crashed,” I said. “Then I was shaking her and shaking her, but she wouldn’t wake up.”
He let me go on like that; at least I don’t recall him telling me to hush. He simply knelt beside me, alongside my mother, listening. When I finished, he remained quiet.
“Mommy,” I whined, poking her arm, clutching Patrice to me, her doll’s eyes fluttering with each jostle. “I want to go home.” I wanted to sleep in my own bed, not in Grandma’s with her musty blankets and sharp toenails, with bedtime stories about mothers passing on to eternal damnation.
That’s when Mr. Mulrey again took my hand in his. “She’s dead.” He brushed aside a lovely curl that flipped over my mother’s brow where the worst gash had been to reveal the precise row of stitches he’d made with thread to match her flesh.
“Where’s all the blood?” I asked, but he misunderstood. I’d meant the blood that concealed her face in our final moments together as we lay in the street. He tugged open her collar to expose three neat stitches in her neck, telling me how he drained her blood from the carotid artery and replaced it with formaldehyde that then hardened inside of her. In spite of myself, I was awed by his ability to erase the wounds, to help me see my mother again.
I kissed my doll’s cheek and settled her against my mother, watching until Patrice’s eyes trembled closed. I almost snatched her back. I wanted to. Instead, I unraveled the calling card twined to her tiny wrist and hid it at the very bottom of my dress pocket. It would be the only memento I had of my mother. When I started to cry, fingering the three stitches (onetwo-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, breathe), Mr. Mulrey placed a hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Never mind what the others say. We’re all sinners and all sinners are welcomed by God.”
But I wasn’t comforted by a god who couldn’t give me back my mother; I found salvation in the undertaker who could. I suppose that’s why I became one.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
I found Amy's descriptive writing to be very good. I love her attention to detail describing the areas around the characters. Enjoyable
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Posted March 9, 2009
An usual subject matter and a brilliant first novel. Amy MacKinnon must have done endless research for this novel but it flows effortlessly as she weaves this compelling story from the viewpoirt of a female undertaker. I was unable to put this down once I started and the first person I passed it to said the same thing - well done!
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Posted January 23, 2009
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After reading this novel, I was amazed to discover it was a first book by the author. I'll be watching for her next work. "Tethered" was very well written, touching deep emotions. The author built suspense by jumping between Clara's present life and and her past, allowing the reader to slowly begin to understand why she is so withdrawn and so unwilling to reach out to others. If this were a simple "who-dun-it," the story wouldn't have worked as well, as it was clear who the culprit was from the moment Clara sees the girl down the hall with the little dog, Peanut. However, because there was so much more to this story--pain, loss, forgiveness--it was a successful story. And, as in life, there was both a happy and a bittersweet ending to it. Not everyone can be saved.
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Posted November 6, 2008
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A riveting debut, Tethered is a story about a quiet, reclusive undertaker, Clara Marsh, who unwittingly gets swept into an unsolved murder mystery involving Precious Doe, an unidentified little girl that Clara herself compassionately prepared for burial a few years earlier. As the mystery deepens, Clara is forced to confront her own doubts about God and what happens to a soul after a body has been buried. What I found truly remarkable about Tethered was MacKinnon's respect for faith. While this book isn't about Christianity, I was struck that it wasn't against it either, which I admit I was almost expecting. While some of the more haunting aspects of the novel might seem too supernatural for some people of faith, what Tethered does is inspire the reader to believe that faith is actually possible. Sometimes if we are blessed to see it, God pulls back the veil just a little, just enough to remind us that He is here with us. It's refreshing to see a mainstream novel pay respect to the very real struggle that humans have with faith even as we desire to believe. To its readers Tethered will hint of the very real possibility of what some of us are already blessed to know, that God exists. <BR/><BR/>Tina Ann Forkner<BR/>www.tinaannforkner.com
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Posted August 25, 2008
A dark, lightning-paced thriller laced with corruption and dysfunction that characters become desperate to overcome. What an intense ride!!
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Posted August 23, 2008
This is a wonderful book - wonderful story - easy to read and never a boring moment.
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Posted August 1, 2008
In Brockton, Massachusetts Clara Marsh works as an undertaker at the Bartholomew Funeral Home where she does better with the dead than the living although she is sympathetic to the grieving. She has no one except perhaps her kindhearted boss, Victor Bartholomew. When Clara finds Trecie in the funeral parlor playing there alone, she becomes concerned for the child. She asks Trecie if she prefers to go to the nearby playground, but Trecie answers no as there is nobody yelling here unlike home and she likes the flowers and candles.----------------- Clara does nothing as Trecie is causing no harm. However, Clara becomes hysterical during a corpse pickup when she finds a child pornography video with the preadolescent Trecie as a star. Detective Mike Sullivan investigates only to tie the ring back to the murdered, unidentified and unclaimed body of Precious Doe, who Clara helped bury and still feels haunted by the child visiting the gravesite regularly. Fearing that Trecie may be in danger a normally compliant Clara and compassionate Mike investigate with neither aware that the resolution leads back to her childhood.------------------- This entertaining mystery stars a fascinating extremely meek heroine. The story line is character driven by predominantly Clara with strong support from Trecie and Mike. That focus on Clara provides an intriguing look at being an undertaker, a job that requires a person to remain detracted yet sympathetic.--------------- Harriet Klausner
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Posted August 31, 2008
This is the first book review I have ever written and I must say BRAVO! Most books entertain until the last page, but this one will haunt me for a long time. Beautifully written, wonderfully flawed characters. I hope Amy MacKinnon has more novels in the works!
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Posted July 23, 2009
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Posted October 20, 2009
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Posted May 7, 2010
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Posted July 27, 2010
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Overview
It changes even more when Detective Mike Sullivan starts questioning her again about a body she prepared three years ago, an unidentified girl found...