EVE GREEN

Fletcher debuts with the tale of a girl’s coming of age in Wales: as plentiful elements of richness and grace slowly give way to fairly standardized small-town gothic.

Evangeline Jones is only seven and living in Birmingham, England, when her pretty young mother dies suddenly, leaving the fatherless Evie orphaned. So it’s off to Wales with this alert and spunky little girl: she’s sent to the village of Cae Tresaint, or, more accurately, to the nearby farm of her maternal grandparents, where—from a viewpoint 21 years later, and expecting her first child—she will re-create for us the remarkable events of her first year on the farm, when she was eight. There will be the life of the farm itself—cattle, sheep, illness, changing weather, veterinary emergencies—to carry the story forward with much of genuine interest, but it’s the mystery of her own parentage—and of her own sexuality—that constitutes Evie’s deeper story. Bit by bit, she will piece together the mystery of her own father—who he was, where he came from, why he disappeared—and in so doing, will gradually learn more and more also about her mother, whose own childhood, and first love, also took place on this very farm. Traces of her absent mother are everywhere: she’s remembered by her own parents, of course, but remembered most fondly by the hired hand, Daniel (16 years older than Evie), by the strange but kind recluse, Billie Macklin, and even, though with ferocity rather than fondness, by the mean and crotchety shopkeeper, Mr. Phipps. Added to Evie’s absent parents is yet another absence—after, that is, the disappearance and presumed abduction of the pretty and flirtatious Rosie Hughes, an element in the plot serves only as adornment, not necessity, and that consequently does its large share in bringing on the element of melodrama as Evie faces trial both by fear and by fire.

Much to enjoy in this rural browse, though the land has been grazed before.