VEE’S BRACELET

Brownell’s book begins with Vee Haines waiting for her 9-year-old son, Ray, to come home. Their ramshackle homestead is in Starve-Out, New Mexico, a place so obscure that it’s not on any map. Vee tells Ray bedtime stories about her own childhood as the oldest daughter of a well-to-do banker in Chicago. Privately, she remembers the series of misfortunes that led her from enjoying an affluent life to eking out a hardscrabble existence with Ray. Then a handsome stranger named Benton arrives, a man who’s down-and-out, but also gentle, respectful, and kind. But after a brief interlude of happiness, things fall apart and Ray threatens to run away. The novel abruptly fast-forwards to Connecticut in 2012 and switches to the point of view of Vee’s grandson, Davey Traska, an overweight college dropout who lacks a full-time job and lives in his mother’s basement. Vee, 99, resides in a nursing home, and Davey worries that she’s beginning to confuse past and present. She says “I’ll see you again yesterday” when he visits, and he wonders if her stories of Starve-Out and Ray are remembered or imagined. At 27, Davey has a longstanding crush on Mia, a woman he’s too scared to approach, and Vee encourages him to take a chance. Then Vee starts flirting with a nursing home resident, which upsets Davey. What happens next leads him to a reckoning and reconnection with his family’s history and a newfound sense of purpose. The sudden shift in time and point of view is jarring at first, but the parallels and connections—including hints of the supernatural—between past and present become more meaningful as the present-day part of the story progresses. Brownell’s writing is apt and evocative, whether describing a mesa’s evening shadow spreading “as though someone was pulling a soft, gray blanket across the desert landscape,” or Davey’s wardrobe of “sweat pants and sweatshirts probably made in sweatshops.” Her characters are relatable and memorable. Vee transforms from a scared young girl into a tough, self-reliant woman, and Davey confronts his fears to change self-pity into hopeful action.