In 1910, a year of Halley\u2019s Comet, fire breaks out at the Earthshine Soap factory, killing seven women. In 1986, another year of the comet, 40-year-old Nona Dixon, first hired as a 7-year-old to represent Earthshine in its marketing, is acting in a soap opera sponsored by the company. Childless and facing divorce, Nona lives in fear her character will be killed off. When Nona\u2019s closest friend, Halley Tuttle, dies after falling out with her grandmother, Earthshine\u2019s 99-year-old owner, Bertie Tuttle, she leaves Nona an old notebook with a recipe for \u201cComet Pills\u201d signed by someone named Opal Doucet. Domet\u2019s narrative shifts between Nona and Opal, with Opal plotting her future and Nona trying to figure out who Opal was. In 1910, Opal isn\u2019t sure herself. A pregnant runaway wife and self-proclaimed spiritualist, she\u2019s confused by the voices she hears but believes that her pills make women happy and fertile. Her most important client is sterile Bertie, whose husband wants to sell the company unless she can stop him. But is Bertie trustworthy? Is Opal? In 1986, Earthshine is under siege as various anonymous Jane Does claim the soap causes addictive side effects. Nona begins to distrust the Earthshine world to which she has pledged loyalty. As connections between 1910 and 1986 reveal themselves\u2014sterility, lost love, infidelity, greed, and ambition, to name a few\u2014real mysteries remain unsolvable: What is choice, misdeed, and\/or unintended consequence? Can one person\u2019s spirit be called forth to inhabit another\u2019s body? Is laughter the correct reaction when a striking 1910 factory worker shouts \u201cOur bodies, our soap.\u201d Domet\u2019s writing is uneven, sometimes overblown, sometimes murky, but also highly imaginative. Her characters are intriguing if ambiguous.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1910, a year of Halley\u2019s Comet, fire breaks out at the Earthshine Soap factory, killing seven women. In 1986, another year of the comet, 40-year-old Nona Dixon, first hired as a 7-year-old to represent Earthshine in its marketing, is acting in a soap opera sponsored by the company. Childless and facing divorce, Nona lives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}