Every once in a while one is fortunate to come across a book that one knows they will think about for a long time, a book that leaves a lasting impression. This is such a book and unbelievably a first book by an author who has previously published short stories.

In many ways this is not an easy book to read, the tension at times was unbearable, the darkness seemed unrelenting. The characters were all trapped in some way and the way they choose to alleviate their stress was not healthy. Brenda, a mother of an autistic child, whose husband is in prison, uses food, to her own detriment. Hourus, her husband, takes revenge on the death of his father and the ills of his childhood. He is entombed in Black Plains in solitary confinement, a prison with guards and a warden whose sole jobs are to break those within. Sephris, the autistic boy, who cannot find anyway to relate his distress in the land of air, as he calls it. One can feel the love that the author has for these flawed characters, the way she wants the reader to understand how they came to be in these situations. To provide a way

She uses magical realism to break the tension, as a way for us to see inside the mind of an autistic child, to go with him into the World of Water, where he can feel safe and relate the thoughts and fears, the questions he has that he cannot express in the land of air.. She uses it as a way for Hourus to escape the inescapable, to connect with the son he has never seen. She shows the reader amazing power of the mind, a mind that will find ways against all odds.
She uses it as a way for her characters to find a measure of peace and understanding.

An unusual and powerful debut novel, full of wonderful, often beautiful prose, a novel that is filled with intense pain but one that is ultimately full of love or at least understanding, a novel that for me is memorable.

ARC from the publisher. ( )