BOTTOM OF THE BREATH

In Mills’ novel, a woman’s placid life in a small town is unsettled by her husband’s infidelity and the disclosure of extraordinary family secrets.

Cyd Carr, in her early 50s, lives a placid life in small-town Lola, Florida. However, her life is turned upside down when she’s in a car accident and realizes that her husband, Loren, was a passenger in the vehicle that hit hers—and he’s accompanied by a woman, Mila Menendez, with whom he’s been having an affair. In the aftermath, Cyd holds out hope that her marriage of 28 years can be salvaged. To that end, she travels with Loren to Phoenix, where a lawyer has summoned her to collect an inheritance after the death of her Aunt Mae. However, during the journey, Cyd learns that Loren hasn’t been forthcoming about his affair; it lasted much longer than he originally said it did, and Mila ended it, not him. It’s also clear that he was in love with his mistress. Devastated, Cyd leaves her spouse in Dallas and heads to Arizona on her own. Mills’ emotionally sensitive drama poignantly expresses Cyd’s bewildered anguish throughout: “They were happy. Forty-eight hours ago, if someone had asked, she would have said she had a good marriage. They had a happy marriage. That’s what she would have said.” Later, Cyd not only inherits some money and a house in Sedona, but also discovers remarkable truths about Mae and other members of her family, which prompts her to rethink her childhood. Over the course of the novel, Mills powerfully evokes an atmosphere of menace and destruction; while Cyd’s away from Lola, for instance, her home is threatened by a “mighty and vengeful” hurricane. She’s memorably depicted as a woman who’s lived a small, safe life, but who’s suddenly forced to reinvent herself and boldly start anew. Overall, it’s an engrossing and often moving novel about the ways in which disaster can create newfound fortitude.

A thoughtful story of how troubles can spark opportunities.