Chasing Sophea: A Novel
Despite her cushy Pasadena life and marriage to the preciously nicknamed "Milky," part-time college teacher Dahlia Chang suffers blackouts and headaches, can't remember a thing about her childhood except her mother dying suddenly and is subject to the malicious jealousy of mysterious bad girl Phoebe. Gradually, Pina (Bliss) reveals what the reader guesses early on—that Phoebe is an alter ego, the product of a mental trauma Dahlia suffered as a girl. Enter Dahlia's Aunt Baby, who resolves to heal Dahlia, even if it means hauling Dahlia to the plantationlike home in Dallas where she grew up to confront the past. Meanwhile, unaware of his wife's journey, Milky strikes out for Dallas on his own to investigate her mysterious condition and learns from resident grave digger Percival Tweed about Dahlia's sordid family history. Emotions drive this novel; the characters often amount to little more than convenient vehicles that speak and think in either hoary dialect or wooden exchanges. When the living and the dead finally reunite, the book picks up a small bit of suspenseful steam and becomes an affecting story about the power of family love to mend old wounds.(Nov.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.