The author, a native of Cooperstown, NY has written a love tale to her town, renamed Templeton. The name was a nom de place used by James Fenimore Cooper for the town in his book The Pioneers. Wilhelmina (Willie) Upton has returned to town, pregnant, distraught, at a turning point in her life. Her mother had kept from her the name of her father, substituting a fable that fit the era of her conception. But Vi, her mother, is willing to offer hints, leaving it to Willie to apply her research skills to complete the task. This quest provides the structure for the novel, as Willie peels back layer after layer of the town’s history in search of her father. The characters and stories she turns up cover centuries, from the time the first white man decided to make a town at this location to Willie’s present day experiences. The characters are often (but not always) interesting and surprising. Groff offers a sufficient supply of the unexpected to keep the tale interesting and the story moving forward.


Lauren Groff - image from Squarebooks.com

The central image of the story is the monster of Templeton. Of course the real monsters are some of the humans who lived there. The monster serves as pretty much a purely literary device. What lies hidden grows over time into something substantial. Once a secret is exposed, new secrets take its place. This is not a sci-fi or horror story by any stretch, although there are occasional elements of the supernatural.

I enjoyed the book, although I did not love it. There were too many characters to give more than a few of them real life, and Groff spreads her attention widely. Groff has been a short story writer and this book reflects that skill. Like Louse Erdrich’s Plague of Doves, it does sometimes seem as if the author was looking for a way to weave together a few disparate elements. Overall, a nice read. I believe she will write tighter books in future and I am looking forward to those.

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Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages