But Ridge’s lingering feelings for Maggie cause heartache for all three of them. Peterson’s eight original songs flesh out Sydney’s lyrics with a good mix of moody musical styles: “Living a Lie” has the drama of a Coldplay piano ballad, while the chorus of “Maybe Someday” marches to the rhythm of the Lumineers. In fact, it creates opportunities for sexy nonverbal communication and witty text messages: Ridge tenderly washes off a message he wrote on Sydney’s hand in ink, and when Sydney adds a few too many e’s to the word “squee” in her text, Ridge replies, “If those letters really make up a sound, I am so, so glad I can’t hear it.” While they fight their mutual attraction, their hope that “maybe someday” they can be together playfully comes out in their music. Ridge’s deafness doesn’t impede their relationship or their music. She finds out after the fact that Ridge already has a long-distance girlfriend, Maggie-and that he's deaf. The two begin a songwriting partnership that grows into something more once Sydney dumps Hunter and decides to crash with Ridge and his two roommates while she gets back on her feet. While music student Sydney is watching her neighbor Ridge play guitar on his balcony across the courtyard, Ridge is watching Sydney’s boyfriend, Hunter, secretly make out with her best friend on her balcony. Hoover is a master at writing scenes from dual perspectives. Sydney and Ridge make beautiful music together in a love triangle written by Hoover ( Losing Hope, 2013, etc.), with a link to a digital soundtrack by American Idol contestant Griffin Peterson. A literary page-turner, morally complex and satisfying in its careful accumulation of detail and in its use of landscape to reveal character. The rest of Watson's story treats the consequences of that arrest: grandfather Hayden threatens his sheriff son, excusing the war hero uncle's sexual rapacity as normal instinct (``You know Frank's always been partial to red meat'') and Frank, after busting all the jelly and preserve jars in the basement where he's imprisoned, kills himself, whereupon the sheriff packs up his wife and son and moves away. He arrests Frank, but locks him in his own basement instead of in jail. But then Marie dies unexpectedly, and David reveals information that leads his father to suspect that Frank had something to do with the death. David's father investigates and wrests from Frank a promise that he won't rape any more Indians. She screams when Uncle Frank treats her-then reveals that Frank has a reputation as a rapist of Indian women. Meanwhile, David's Uncle Frank, a war hero, is a doctor, and the plot unfolds when Marie Little Soldier, the Haydens' housekeeper, falls sick. David's grandfather was also once a sheriff in a place where the land is harsh, the wind strong, and the sky endless. David Hayden, now a history teacher, narrates the events of over 40 years ago, when his father, trained as a lawyer, was in his second term as sheriff of Bentrock, a small community of 2,000 close to the Canadian border. Watson ( In a Dark Time, 1980), winner of the 1993 Milkweed National Fiction Prize, offers a lean, gaunt narrative rich with implication about a 12-year-old boy who witnesses the anguish of his sheriff father, who is forced to arrest his own brother for rape.
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