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Overview
The year is 1941. Rooted in the lonely outreaches of the Allegheny Mountains lies the town of Hyde Bend. Its heart: a steel mill; its bones: the tight community of Polish immigrants who inhabit it; and its blood: their fierce Catholic faith. But buried in the town's soul is a dangerous secret surrounding the death of a revered priest.
Upon returning to Hyde Bend, a young woman accidentally uncovers the truth behind this crime, which leads to a second murder. The town quickly erupts in fear and finger pointing. The girl is forced to unravel the now-intertwined mysteries and discovers her own family at the center. Now she must confront all she holds sacred if she is to save her family and herself in this story of lost innocence, transgression, faith, and forgiveness.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060525071 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 04/12/2005 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 514,487 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.69(d) |
| Age Range: | 14 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Grave of God's Daughter
A Novel
Chapter One
I was once told that the distance between a lie and the truth is like the distance between thunder and rain -- the latter is never far behind. But now, even as darkening clouds crest the hillside above the cemetery where my mother will soon be buried, I know it will not rain, not today.
It is almost winter and the grass is brittle underfoot, though it remains a vibrant, almost vehement, shade of green. My mother's simple coffin rests on planks of wood, suspended above her open grave, while a handful of mourners gather along either side. The few elderly men and women stand around solemnly, unspeaking, like people waiting for a bus. I recognize no one, but to them, I am the stranger.
"Are you the daughter?" a voice asks.
It is the priest. His skin looks pale against his long purple vestments and his back is severely hunched beneath his overcoat. It is as if years of ministering to the people of this town have buffeted him into the humble pose, the way a tree can be permanently bent by the wind.
"Yes," I say. "Yes, I am. I'm sorry I--"
"No matter. You're here now," he says, with the firm manner of a doctor rather than the kind or careful demeanor usually ascribed to a priest. That may be the very reason my mother chose him to perform her service.
I imagine her planning this funeral the way one might plan a wedding. Making a guest list, choosing the church, handpicking songs for the organist to play. More important still would have been the location of her burial, Saint Ladislaus cemetery. Set on a low knuckle of the Allegheny Mountains, it is an old community cemetery, full of generations of coal miners and steelworkers who saved what little money they earned to buy marble tombs and detailed headstones, the only memorial to their existence they would ever have. What no one knew when the cemetery was founded was that an underground stream flowed deep beneath the property and, over time, the moving water has buckled the land. The once-smooth sprawl of earth is now rolling with knolls, the grass undulating like sand dunes. All of the delicately carved headstones list and pitch as if riding a heady sea. The sculptures of angels with their eyes upturned to heaven are now tipped and gazing off like bored schoolgirls. Undermined by what secretly pulsed below, this cemetery speaks more about the condition of life than that of death.
"You made it."
I turn and find my brother, Martin, plodding up the dirt path toward the grave site. Were it not for his voice, I wouldn't have known him. His face looks as if all expression has been beaten out of it. His clothes are rumpled like he has just been in a fight and was lucky to have escaped unscathed.
Martin hugs me roughly. In that brief embrace, I can smell the liquor on him.
"I'm glad you're here," he says.
His eyes linger on my face for a moment, a flicker of grateful recollection, then he pulls away, uncomfortable being so close. I know better than to ask him how he's been. It will only invite an argument about how I haven't called or written or visited, about how I have abandoned my old life, this town and him. It is neither the time nor the place for a conversation about my failings. To spare him the silence, I ask softly, "Who are these people?"
"Couldn't say for sure. All from the church, I s'pose."
We are my mother's only living relatives, the only remnants of her family.
"Priest's about to start," Martin says, ending the conversation before either one of us can say something that might make us feel more than we have to.
I approach my mother's coffin and Martin positions himself at my side, though he is more in front of me than anything else. There is a rip in his jacket that starts at the shoulder and carves down over the ribs, a jagged gash that makes it seem as if my brother has been stabbed in the back. The long, fraying tear is a reminder of why I am here and why I left.
What I know about my brother's life now is scant, almost cryptic, like the bottom of a page torn out of a long, inscrutable book. He hasn't worked in years and has never married. For him, home is a room in a boardinghouse and the only regular thing about his life is the welfare checks he receives monthly in the mail. Decades of heavy drinking have taken their toll. It is as though the liquor has literally diluted my brother's blood, leaving his spirit limp, like a bedsheet on a clothesline in a gale. He is not the person I once knew nor, I doubt, will he ever be again.
The priest clears his throat and bows his head ceremoniously. Martin drops his eyes, then buries his hands in his pockets, hiding them from the chill of the rising wind. It appears to be an effort for him to stand straight. I can't be sure if he is drunk or if it is true sorrow that has rendered him unsteady. When he was a child, my brother was precocious, eager, resolute. He was the child I would have liked to be. But since that one spring in our childhood, when everything in our small world unhinged itself from what we knew it to be, my brother has never been the same. From then on, Martin was a ship set adrift, never able to maintain course. Years later, his drinking served only to snap the few sails he had onboard. I fear that with my mother's death Martin's ship will run aground and become hopelessly moored on shore, never to set sail again. It is a fear that stings my heart ...
The Grave of God's DaughterA Novel. Copyright © by Brett Block. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
At the funeral of her estranged mother, a woman is faced with the past she's tried to put behind her only to find that what transpired in her childhood has never been further away than her own shadow. Now the choice to close the thirty year rift between mother and daughter has been laid before her. The year is 1941. Rooted in the lonely outreaches of the Allegheny Mountains is the town of Hyde Bend. Its heart is a steel mill, its bones the tight community of Polish immigrants who inhabit it, and its blood their fierce Catholic faith. But buried in the town's soul is a dangerous secret surrounding the death of a revered Priest.
When a young girl from the town's poorest quarter accidentally unearths a sliver of the truth surrounding the illicit secret, a woman is found dead and Hyde Bend erupts in fear and finger-pointing. Compelled to unravel the intertwining mysteries, the young girl discovers her own family at the center. To save her family and herself, she must confront everything she thought she knew, including her feelings about all she holds sacred.
Vivid, evocative, and psychologically penetrating, Brett Ellen Block captures the hidden inner life of a town battling to survive in a rapidly changing world, and paints an extraordinary portrait of a young girl's desperate longing for grace.
Questions for Discussion
- Why do you think Brett Ellen Block chose for her narrator to remain nameless? How did not knowing her name impact your impression of this character? Do you wish that you had known her name?
- Though the community cemetery was compromised by an underwater stream -- and had become a place where "all of the delicately carved headstones list and pitch as if riding a heady sea" -- why would the girl's mother choose to be buried there? Who do you think will take the plot next to her mother's grave?
- How does the protagonist feel about Martin's fate? Do you think that she bears any responsibility for his descent into the cycle of alcoholism and poverty? What do you think ultimately caused her brother to "never be the same?" How do you think Martin would have felt about the relationship of his mother and father if he learned the truth about his sister's parentage?
- Do you feel that it was the discovery of her mother's secret that saved the girl from a life in Hyde Bend? What do you think ultimately gave her the strength and determination to escape the small town's brutal legacy and establish her own foothold in the world?
- How did the fierce Catholic faith of the different characters in this novel drive and sustain them? How did it betray them? Discuss how fear -- of both what is real, and what is imagined -- serves as a driving force in this novel.
- Discuss the father figures in the life of the young girl. What kind of surrogate parenting did she receive from Mr. Goceljak and Mr. Beresik? What did they offer her that the women in her life, her mother and the nuns at her school could not?
- Discuss the significance of the Black Madonna. Why do you think that her mother "prayed to it daily, locking eyes with the Madonna and whispering to her, pleading almost conspiratorially?" What do you think she prayed for? What might she have lost from her life when she was forced to sell it to save her daughter's name?
- After the girl and Martin reclaim the portrait of the Black Madonna , why do you think it was so important to the girl and Martin to touch its surface? What longing in the children was satisfied? In what way were they able to establish new boundaries in their relationship with their mother?
- In Hyde Bend, a community that experienced such terrible poverty, how did you feel about the indulgences of the priest? Do you believe that his example served a role in ultimately destroying the young girl's faith? Why do you think the girl's mother chose to work at Saint Ladislaus for her entire life?
- How does the girl punish herself for the actions of her parents? How does she comfort herself? Do you believe that her mother's relationship with the revered priest was a "romantic tale" as the girl hopes or do you think the story of her conception was more complicated?
- Discuss the character of Swatka Pani. Do you think that it was the drowning of her son that caused her to wreak vengeance on Hyde Bend, or do you think that her vicious nature was innate? Who do you think her actions tortured the most and why? Do you think that her death was justified? Do you think she brought it on herself?
- At the end of the novel, the girl has "a family now, a husband, children, another life, a life that is waiting for me somewhere else." She fears an argument with her brother about "how I have abandoned my old life, this town, and him." Do you think that the girl had to completely divorce herself from the past in order to claim her present? Do you think the narrator has found happiness? Do you think that coming to understand how deeply her mother loved her was what ultimately might have saved her?
About the Author
Brett Ellen Block is originally from New Jersey, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her debut collection of stories, Destination Known, won the Drue Heinz Literary Prize, and she also is the past recipient of the Hopwood Prize, the Haugh Prize, a NEA screenwriting grant, and the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles.