14 Degrees Below Zero

Minnesota is a cold place. The memory of mild weather is the only thing that gives hope to the people living there as they battle the long hard winters. Lewis Ingraham is feeling the chill of winter hard this year. He's on antidepressants after the recent torturous death of his wife from cancer and his daughter, Jay only twenty-three with a preschool child of her own, is dating a man Lewis detests. Lewis isn't certain of much lately. At the advanced age of forty-seven he let his high paying executive career fade away after his wife's death and he's struggling to pay the bills from his new job as a salesmen in a men's store. The medication he's taking doesn't seem to help much because he's as unhappy and bitter as he's ever been, and in addition he isn't in control of his emotions. His boss has told him he's been acting strangely. Lewis is going on a downward spiral of depression and he has negative, sometime violent feelings towards his daughter's boyfriend, Stephen. In his mind, the only reason to continue living is his daughter and his granddaughter; for those two he would fight to the death. As his mental instability progresses, Lewis becomes more comfortable with the idea that doing violence to Stephen would help cement his family together and when his dead wife appears to him, he decides the family must be reunited. Beautiful and brilliant, Jay is also having a difficult time of it this year. Her mother's death has made life difficult, not only that they loved each other but now she has no buffer between her father and herself. Always a hard emotionally aloof and cold man, her father Lewis never lets Jay forget that she made a mistake by dropping out of a bright college future to have her baby, as an unwed mother, at age nineteen. Jay is working as a waitress and feels stuck in her life. Her father is calling her on the phone from morning to night and she doesn't have the heart or energy to tell him to back off. She's also dating a college professor Stephen and her father hates him. Her father's constant undermining of the relationship is making Jay miserable. There isn't much suspense in the overall book as the opening chapter starts with an altercation, the most violent act in the story, and then goes back in time to show how it came about. As the outside temperature plummets the outlook for everyone in the story does too. 14 Degrees Below Zero is advertised as a story of psychological suspense but it is not for the usual suspense lover. It's a dark story that's unrelenting in the desperation and despair of its characters and the cold and dark skies of the Minnesota location contributes to the overall feel of the story. Well written, Quinton Skinner, the author will take you through the character's emotional turmoil and will leave you feeling as wrung out and bleak as everyone in the book.