The Remontle family comes together for Emma's funeral—a situation that forces secrets, struggles, and moral dilemmas to come to the fore. With A SMILE IN EVERY SEASON, Paul Z. Alber delivers emotional, well-developed characters that reflect tone, mood, and setting through each of the seasons.
One common denominator distinguishes these characters’ points of view on religion and culture: Mrs. Remontle, and how she raises her children. She mistreats Angie, Ettie, and Emma, while giving the royal treatment to her son Lionel. We get such insights as “Mother is needy, 18 years of torture because of her" and “Prince Pup. That nickname was derived from him being like a puppy to their mother, who treated him like a prince.” With the kids' father out of the picture since their adolescent years, Mrs. Remontle was the parent to guide them throughout their lives. This is vital to their religious experience, especially concerning Emma and her daughter Tizzie. It’s apparent how Alber incorporates the anger and turmoil that Emma suffered through her mother, clouding her religious and cultural viewpoints.
Meanwhile, Lionel passively tells his family about his homosexuality. And Ettie’s ex-husband Devin reveals that he's gay, too, which later comes alive in the character of his love interest: Detective Douglas Duncan. Alber delivers a shocking yet brilliant narrative that introduces Detective Duncan as a former National Guardsman, football player, and police officer—areas where anything LGBTQ is typically unwelcome.
Alber emphasizes cultural issues with homosexuality through irony in Douglas’s background. There is also the connection that Ettie and Devin express while remaining friends, hindering Ettie’s emotions and Devin’s newfound romance. This is where Alber introduces the “front-seat passenger” concept: “You’re asking for a whole heap of hurt if you keep somebody as your front-seat passenger when you’re not theirs.” Combined with the acceptance of sexual identity, the emotional struggle of divorce follows through with the theme of intertwining cultural customs and joy.
While Alber abundantly expresses relationships through an overuse of explicit detail and language, readers immediately sense the characters' passion, love, lust, desire, and especially the drama through the storytelling in general. A beautiful picture is painted in the readers' minds, generating a truly riveting novel.
Reflecting on LGBTQ relationships, religious customs, and family values, Paul Z. Alber's A SMILE IN EVERY SEASON illustrates in depth the experiences of finding acceptance, going through societal struggles, and feeling pure happiness.
~ Meghan Soderholm for IndieReader