Up this week in the CFBA Tour is Lisa Wingate's Blue Moon Bay published by Bethany House. Blue Moon Bay is the second novel centered on Moses Lake, Texas, following Larkspur Cove which I haven't read. I've also read Lisa's Word Gets Around which was the second novel in the Daily Texas Trilogy.
Blue Moon Bay with its attractive cover gives us the relocated, uptight, cynical, self-absorbed, ambitious career-climbing workaholic architect Heather Hampton who now lives and works for a high-pressure firm in Seattle. When the possibility for the expansion and design of the plant where her father worked arrives at her firm, Heather decides to contact her estranged mother to secure the sale of the family properties back in Moses Lake, Texas, for this project.
Raised with her little brother Clay, a move back to her father's hometown (Moses Lake) in her senior year of high school elicited nothing but sullen wrath and a Gothic transformation to this previously devoted Daddy's girl. Told primarily from Heather's first person account, we witness firsthand her motives and flaws and learn why she's estranged from her family which includes her elderly uncles Herbert and Charley, her mother and brother.
Just before the signing date of the contract, Heather's corporate real estate boyfriend Richard tells her he hasn't heard from her mother and time is of the essence or the offer will be withdrawn. This news facillitates a quick trip to Moses Lake to insure the signing of the contract before its impending due date. Heather's logic for getting the papers signed overrides any other concerns in spite of her dread of returning to this place of great tragedy, loss, and emotional upheaval. Upon arriving, no one will engage her concerns, there is the seemingly endless tension and conflict between her and her mother, and her brother is supposedly going to take over the restaurant and cabins of one of her elderly uncles while her Berkeley-based literature-teaching mother plans to turn her other uncle's funeral home into a bed and breakfast.
As she suspects, nothing is as it seems and no one is willing to enlighten her which builds fuel for her short fuse. The truly bright spot in the whole ordeal is connecting with her high school secret crush who now shows an undeniable interest in her. When he takes her on a romantic visit to Blue Moon Bay, she almost forgets her loathing of her previous home - plus everything else she thought mattered to her.
Although the underlying evidence of something going on behind Heather's back permeates her time in Moses Lake, it's so well hidden that it almost comes as too much of a surprise toward the last few chapters of the novel when the shift in the story makes it feel like two different but merging plots. By focusing the entire story on Heather's perceptions -skewed as they are - and written in her POV, the reader stumbles into the suspenseful conclusion along with Heather, but it doesn't feel quite cohesive. At least to me. Focused more on the internal struggles of discovering who Heather has become - or really is - the story then takes a different direction toward the end.
Lisa Wingate is a talented writer with well-established characters and some great prose. Heather Hampton is a mess and could be an unlikeable protagonist if Lisa hadn't given her a witty, sardonic, flighty but vulnerable personality. Her faith journey is understated throughout and contrasted to the beloved Mennonite housekeeper Ruth, the only one she thought truly cared about her in her youthful rebellious state of mind. Ruth is now dying of cancer. Heather's epiphany is worth the wait although the final page and a half seem more like a mini-lecture than the character's conclusion.
Father, please continue to inspire Lisa's stories and provide what she needs to do as you ask. Bless all of her efforts to honor you in all she does. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.