Up from the Blue-Susan Henderson

Up from the Blue
Susan Henderson
Harper, Sep 21 2010, $13.99
ISBN: 9780061984037

In 1991 in DC, while her husband Simon Williams is away, Tillie goes into labor. Scared she calls her father General Harris, whom she has not talked to in a few years and is unaware she is married let alone pregnant. He meets her at G.W. ER though she asked him not to.

His arrival takes her back to when she was eight years old and they lived in New Mexico. One day her mother Mara refused to leave her bed; frightening Tillie and her older brother Phil while their military father the colonel is away. When he returns, he finds his household in disarray and his wife in bed where he learns she has stayed for the days he was TDY. Each morning he lifted his spouse off the bed and dumped her on the floor where she stayed hysterically weeping. When he takes a position as a weapons system expert at the Pentagon, he and the two kids move to DC, but Mara is gone and the Colonel refuses to admit she existed.

This is an intriguing family drama as Tillie gives birth; all the fears she hid about her mom surface especially when her dad arrives. Character driven, readers will want to know, jut like Tillie does, what happened to Mara. Susan Henderson provides a terrific taut thriller.

Harriet Klausner