Make a Wish

From the dust jacket: "Make A Wish is the story of the gentle dying of adolescence, of love sworn forever but lasting only a snowy weekend, of Alice Keller and her pink 1947 breasts, of Rosemary the beautiful fat woman, of two brothers who are no longer able to love each other. It's the story of the pain in leaving the past behind. It is the story of Philip Thomas Moore, a man with a private tales to tell of his life as a public person. It's the story of the most tragic news event in Philip Moore's career, that of Grace McElroy, a mother maddened by love to murder her children in an act of mercy." From the prologue (think of it as the Look Inside This Book feature): "Philip Thomas Moore is a public person, but he concerns himself with private considerations . . . nostalgia, grief, self-pity and the like. Grace Becker McElroy, on the other hand, was a private person. But then she committed a public act, and for a few days she was a household name." From the first chapter, entitled "A Little More Beer Would Not Hurt the Situation": "The evening leaned brown and moist across slate roofs that were like the backs of pigeons. I sat on the porch with my niece Frances, and she said: 'Is it too cold for you.' She was sixteen, and she worried about me, and it passed for love, and I was grateful for it." Sadly, most of Don Robertson's novels are out of print. I haven't found and read all of them yet, but the ones I've read have all been satisfying and often outstanding, both in the storytelling and the style.

Don Robertson is a master whose characters are clearly drawn and completely life-like. You will hate to see yourself revealed in characters whose actions are despicable. The religious analogies are intriguing. This is a very memorable book, not as lighthearted as The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread. Trying to understand a mother who kills her children, seeing yourself or people you know revealed in the family's and the townspeople's reactions, leads to deep thoughts and searching questions