At THE HEART OF FAMILY by Renee Field are four adult sisters—Fern, Rose, Willow, and Lily. Fern and Rose, the two older siblings, are married with families of their own but have remained close. When they lost Willow’s twin Lily to a freak boating accident years earlier, Willow had distanced herself from Fern and Rose. Each chapter of the book is written from one character’s point of view (POV) which enables clear transitions between narrative perspectives. But since all the POV characters have a similar voice (vocabulary, tone, and dialect), their personalities are much the same. Fern and Rose, in particular, have comparable personalities, dialogue, and traits. This may be the case in some real-life families and therefore believable, but it may not engage readers who enjoy one-of-a-kind characters in a story.
The first third of the book is dedicated to backstory and set-up. Field describes a family life cycle with typical problems and challenges that include illness, death, addiction, infidelity, financial issues, and vulnerable relationships. The real drama begins in Chapter 18, when cousins belonging to two of the estranged mothers are seriously injured together in a car crash. This is where the family dynamics start to get interesting. The middle third of the book centers around the tragic car accident and its aftermath. Relationships change—some for the better and some for the worse. Field does a good job creating relationship arcs among the characters, drawing from their internal selves as much as the interactions between them. THE HEART OF FAMILY personifies the collective life of so many typical families—something to which most people will be able to relate but too much run-of-the-mill narrative may not hold reader’s attention.
Field writes in a clear, distinctive style in simple language that makes the story easy to follow. She is skilled at descriptive writing as is showcased when she talks about the family’s ancestral homestead in Nova Scotia that is reachable only by boat. Her descriptions of the home, the surrounding property, and all the memories tied to it are vivid and convincing.
THE HEART OF FAMILY by Renee Field astutely portrays a family’s experience with and reaction to conventional familial problems—difficulties related to strained relationships, shaky finances, illness, and death.
~Florence Osmund for IndieReader