Genevieve Morrissey’s THEA takes place in the late 1920s. Teenage Thea lives with her mother in an apartment attached to the home of the young Dr. Hallam, who recently moved to Oklahoma City from Chicago. While Thea is determined to finish high school, she also takes over much of her mother’s job as a live-in housekeeper and cook for the doctor because of her mother’s alcoholism (which she struggles to keep secret at the height of Prohibition). When Dr. Hallam stumbles upon Thea studying his medical texts one day, he takes her on as a project, attaining her tutors and providing her a salary in addition to her mother’s. She questions his intentions, but not for long, as a visitor to Dr. Hallam’s home reveals to her the scandalous reason why he had to leave Chicago—a reason that unites Dr. Hallam and Thea in friendship.
Thea’s friendly, forthright voice invites the reader into her emotional world. The girl is practical and stubborn to a fault, a foil to her irresponsible (though just as stubborn) mother. Her desire to learn and understand inspires, with her yearning for the college education that almost no girls received at the time driving the plot. Dr. Hallam is at first mysterious and intimidating, but as he opens up to Thea, his shyness and compassion make him just as likeable. Their story is one of friendship and found family, with a heartwarming conclusion that makes all they’ve weathered together and separately worthwhile. Thea and Dr. Hallam’s bond is truly touching and expressed in earnest dialogue, as when Thea asks “If I pick Chicago, will you come see me sometimes?” and Dr. Hallam replies “I will come see you if you go to the moon.”
Thea’s engaging narration offers poignant descriptions with precise language. She points out that “if Dr. Hallam studied children with cancer, it might account for him being gloomy” and asserts that “My mother didn’t raise me at all. I raised myself. I’m sorry if I didn’t do a good job.” Some stretches of exposition tell rather than show and slow the story’s pace, as when Thea and her mother have an argument: “Ma cried first, and then lost her temper right back at me. She called me selfish, and cruel, and ungrateful, and said I couldn’t possibly understand all the sacrifices she’d made for me until I was a mother myself. That smarted.” Despite these instances of emotional distance, the narrative is gripping, realistic, and integrates authentic historical detail: local accents, adherence to the social etiquette of the time, and adroit observations (on politics, Prohibition, and the cultural influence of religion).
Overall, THEA is a moving historical coming-of-age novel whose characters’ compassion and empathy inspires.
Genevieve Morrissey’s THEA is a heartwarming historical novel with believable characters who are easy to root for in spite of—or perhaps because of—their stubbornness and social subversions.
~Aimee Jodoin for IndieReader