Secrets of Eden

by Chris Bohjalian

When a murder-suicide rocks a small Vermont town, secrets of the victims are revealed. Alice and George Hayward did not have an ideal marriage; more than one person in town knew that. What they didn’t know was that George physically abused Alice. And that Alice found refuge in the arms of the local minister.

We learn the details of the rocky Hayward marriage and the grisly murder-suicide via four different points of view:

• Reverend Stephen Drew: the local minister and Alice’s former lover,

• Catherine Benincasa: the state’s attorney who suspects that it wasn’t a suicide and openly suspects the good reverend,

• Heather Laurent: the kooky angel-obsessed author whose own parents died in circumstances similar to those of the Haywards,

• Katie Hayward: the teenaged daughter of Alice and George.

Of course, what the evidence points to and what actually happened are wildly different. Interesting characters and situations, though the state’s attorney almost seemed like an afterthought.

3/1/10