Book description
Young veterinarian Rachel Goddard's world begins to crumble when a
client rushes into the animal hospital with a basset hound struck by a
car during a thunderstorm. The dog owner's terrified tot, drenched with
rain, loses sight of her mother in the flurry of activity and screams,
“Mommy! I want Mommy!” Instantly Rachel is hurled back in time to a day
in her own childhood when her baby sister Michelle uttered the same cry
while thunder crashed and rain poured down on them. The unearthed memory
feels like a fragment from a nightmare, and Rachel doesn't understand
its meaning or the anguish it stirs up in her. When she seeks answers
she learns nothing from Michelle or from Judith, their loving but
manipulative mother. Judith is a psychologist who is only too happy to
have her adult daughters still living in her elegant Tudor house outside
Washington, DC. But their apparently serene home is a house of secrets
where Judith's unspoken rules forbid questions about the family history
or the daughters' long-dead father. As more baffling memories surface,
Rachel begins to suspect that nothing about her family is what it seems.
Fighting her mother's attempts to control her, Rachel embarks on a quest
that takes her deep into her own memory as well as halfway across the
country. The heartbreaking truth she uncovers will shatter her world and
force her to make an unthinkable choice. The Heat of the Moon is Sandra
Parshall's first novel. At 23, veterinarian Rachel Goddard has mixed
emotions about life-satisfied with her job and life in general, she
harbors regrets about her relationship with her mother, Judith and
younger sister, Michelle. Although they live together in Judith's
well-appointed home, they're not as close as Rachel would like; she's
always felt that her mother favored Michelle over her. She chalked her
negative feelings up to petty jealousy until the opening scene of this
debut novel when she becomes convinced that there's another explanation
for her distress. Certain it has something to do with her father, who
died when she was a toddler, Rachel begins asking uncomfortable
questions of her mother; this further poisons her family relationship,
as Judith refuses to answer, and Michelle, ever the dutiful daughter,
chastises her sister for the impertinent queries. Driven by impulses she
doesn't fully understand, Rachel persists, forcing revelations that are
as shocking as they are painful. For a first novel, this book is
surprisingly polished and accomplished-Parshall knows her stuff, and it
shows. Readers will thrill to Rachelle's journey of discovery, which
leads to the book's first “ending.” But it's the part of the book that
follows that crescendo that makes this novel stand out, as Rachelle is
forced to react to her discoveries. It's here that she, and Parshall,
prove themselves worthy of readers' attention and admiration; the book's
true climax is touching and memorable. Sandra Parshall grew up in
South Carolina and has worked as a reporter on newspapers in South
Carolina, West Virginia, and Baltimore. She lives in Northern Virginia
with her husband, a long-time Washington journalist, and three cats.
