MEN AND DOGS

The collapse of her marriage, not to mention a three-story fall, sends a woman back home to Charleston, S.C., to investigate her father’s disappearance, in Crouch’s sardonic second (Girls in Trucks, 2008).

Hannah, 35, and her now-estranged husband Jon are sudden San Francisco millionaires—their online sex-toy business has taken off. Her drinking and infidelity have driven Jon away. Hannah suffered her most intractable emotional wound 24 years before, the day her father Buzz, a successful doctor, motored out alone into Charleston harbor, accompanied only by the family dog, Tucker. He never showed up for his son Palmer’s soccer game that afternoon. His boat was found, containing only Tucker. Buzz’s body was never recovered. His beautiful wife, Daisy, moved on and married DeWitt, Charleston’s wealthiest man. Hannah has always compared her looks—she resembles her father, whose features look too big on her—unfavorably to her mother’s. After drunkenly scaling Jon’s apartment building to prove her love, and losing her footing thanks to a yapping terrier, she wakes up in the hospital. Jon and Daisy give her a choice: recuperation in Charleston, or rehab. Rooting among old photos in DeWitt’s mansion, she discovers some unsettling clues. One snapshot shows Daisy and Buzz at a party with a group of stoned, hippie-like friends. Hovering in the background is DeWitt. But Daisy claimed not to have met DeWitt until after Buzz vanished. Palmer, a veterinarian, is quarreling with his boyfriend Tom over whether they want a child—as if gay life in Charleston wasn’t challenging enough. In his mind, Palmer obsessively revisits his father’s last day—was Buzz driven to suicide after accidentally spotting Palmer in flagrante with another boy? Only Hannah still thinks Buzz may be alive. But if he is, why did he abandon her? Although it’s believable, one senses Hannah’s quest for Buzz is merely a pretext—self-knowledge and redefinition of family are the real goals here.

Sunny outlook with enough clouds to keep it interesting.