The Den by Abi Maxwell - My Review and Blog Tour

Blog Tour The Den Abi Maxwell

Hello, readers, I have a treat for lovers of dual time/ contemporary/ Historical fiction, Women's fiction and coming of age stories as this versatile books fits all of those briefs.

My Review of The Den – Abi Maxwell

The Den is probably best described as a dual-time coming of age story, as it tells the stories of 2 pairs of sisters living about 150 years apart in the same farming area of New Hampshire. It gently bestows on the reader a sense of long hot summer days and the thrill of self-discovery and growing passions, it explores the need to be needed and what it’s like to grow apart from a much-loved sibling and touches on the different rules and restrictions placed on women.

The main portion of the story is that of 12-year-old Jane and her older sister teenage Henrietta. Often left to their own devices the two girls are very close as children, until Henrietta begins to develop an interest in boys and sex, as she begins to go off the rails somewhat it causes a rift between the two youngsters. They grow apart as Jane yearns to stay close to Henrietta but is viewed increasingly as a nuisance by her increasingly reckless sibling, who begins to change into a much less lovable girl than the childhood companion Jane has always looked up to. I felt Janes anguish and frustration at being unable to maintain the closeness with her elder sister, which causes her to make a bad decision which is to haunt her all her life.

The Den of the title is the ruined remains of an old homestead which lies on the farmland where the girls live, it is a place they are drawn to and which is to be pivotal in their lives.

150 years earlier the “Den” was occupied by a young couple, Elspeth the wife newly arrived from Scotland had to leave in a hurry to join her husband who had come out to seek new opportunites.

Pregnant and lonely, she is very homesick and misses her little sister Claire with whom she maintains contact through letters. She is very isolated and her husband never seems to quite make the most of the opportunities he planned to, he works long hours and she has few friends apart from an elderly neighbour who becomes a good friend and almost a surrogate father to her and encourages her to write stories, keeping her mind occupied. One such story become a local urban legend, a story about a family who may or may not have been eaten by, or even turned into, coyotes and it is this story which Jane and Henrietta discover over a century after it is written and which places the Den as a location of importance to both parts of the story.

The parallel stories run alongside each other, with many similarities, both address sisterhood relationships, loneliness and isolation, puberty and the dawning of sexual awareness and forbidden relationships.

It’s quite a laconic tale and plays out gradually with the growing maturity and sexual dawning of the 4 girls at its centre.

I must confess, being a historic fiction aficionado, I would have favoured the historical timeline being introduced into the story much earlier and to have been given more emphasis on the lives of the two sisters rather than concentrating a lot on the Coyote tale written by the historical character, which I found somewhat mystifying. Though overall the book is an extremely satisfying read which draws the reader in beautifully and keeps you wanting to know what happens, or happened next.

The Blurb

A hypnotic story of YOUTH, SEX and POWER

A story of two women cast out by the same community though separated by a hundred years

A story of two extraordinary, magnetic women and their disappearances - a hundred years apart - from the small New England town they call home.

Henrietta and Jane are growing up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, their mother a remote artist, their father in thrall to the folklore and legend of their corner of New England. When Henrietta falls under the spell of Kaus, an outsider and petty criminal, Jane takes to trailing the couple, spying on their trysts, until one night, Henrietta vanishes into the woods.

Elspeth and Claire are sisters separated by an ocean. Elspeth’s pregnancy at seventeen meant she was quickly married and sent away from her Scottish village to make a new life in America. When she comes to the attention of the local mill owner, a series of wrenching and violent events unfolds, culminating in her disappearance.

As Jane and Claire search in their own times for their missing sisters, each uncovers the strange legend of Cold Thursday, and of a family apparently transformed into coyotes. But what does his myth really mean? Are their sisters dead, destroyed by the men who desired them? Or have they made new lives, elsewhere, beyond the watchful eyes of the community they longed to escape?

You can find the book now on Amazon and other good bookstores.

The Author

Abi Maxwell is the author of an acclaimed story collection, LAKE PEOPLE, and her fiction has also appeared in McSweeney’s. She studied writing at the University of Montana and now lives in New Hampshire, where she grew up, with her husband and son.