Wish You Well

As a huge fan of crime-fiction novels, I was naturally an avid reader of the work of the masters of such genres, such as Jeffery Deaver and David Baldacci. I love the high-octane pace of super-charged thrillers, and the world of deception and law-enforcement. This was why I had been putting off Baldacci's 'Wish You Well', an old-fashioned coming-of-age story that was unlike anything he had written before. I only picked it up after I was done with all his available crime-genre books at the library, expecting it to be a huge snore-fest.

As it turns out, day-to-day drama can be just as shocking and devastating as the larger-than-life crime extravaganzas Baldacci's accustomed to shaping. The story begins with a car crash, killing the father of 12 year old Lou and 7 year old Oz, while leaving their mother in a coma. Lou initially held her mother responsible for the death of her beloved dad, for her parents had been arguing prior to the crash, and was ashamed for being resentful at her own comatose mother.

The Cardinal kids, with their unconscious mother, was sent to live with their great-grandmother in rural Virginia. The mountains was their father's childhood home, and although he uses the rustic environment of the Virginian mountains as the setting for his novels, he had never once returned to visit. Louisa, Lou's namesake and the kids' great-grandma, is a strict but loving woman, and graciously takes the three into her humble home. Thrown into a completely foreign surrounding, the city kids slowly learn to adapt to an environment without electricity and tap water. Louisa teaches them the ways of the mountain, and the children gamely chip in with the farm work.

A recurring theme in the novel is 'wishing'. Diamond, a wild, free-spirited native boy tells Lou and Oz of a haunted wishing well, and intones that in order to make a wish, one must give up their most treasured possession to the spirits that haunt the well. One of the most touching scenes in the novel sees the 7 year old Oz sneaking to the well in the dead of the night, away from the gaze of his sister's cynical attitude towards the supernatural, and leaving his teddy bear by the well, while praying for his mother's recovery from the coma. Unbeknown to him, Lou had followed him there to keep an eye on her little brother, and she broke down in sobs by the well after Oz had left.

Lou and Oz finds a friend in Diamond, an orphan who is seemingly independent. His infectious and joyous attitude makes him an utterly lovable character, and his own misinformed views towards Christianity shows us that one doesn't need preachers or churches to have faith. Diamond's claims that 'seeing how God sends an angel to protect him every time he's baptized, he has it done as many as 9 times and hopes he has a whole regiment by now' made me laugh out loud on the MRT. Diamond is a refreshing comic figure in a novel that threatens to overwhelm with grief. I shoulda seen it coming, though; Baldacci often makes his readers love a character, then brutally kills him off. Diamond abruptly met his end in a natural gas explosion, in a scene that left me breathless with anger (towards the miners for illegally mining for natural gas, and towards that bastard Baldacci for doing this to me).

The novel shifts seamlessly into a courtroom drama towards the end, as their lawyer friend battles it out with a ruthless gas company that wants to turn the Virginia mountains into an industrial site. As Louisa's home is situated at the prime location, the company wouldn't buy the land from the various owners unless the old bird sells. She steadfastly refuses, and her barn was set alight by vengeful neighbors seeking to make a profit from this sale. Louisa was shocked into a stroke, and the company sees this as an opportunity to proclaim her mentally unfit to make this decision about selling her land. The courtroom battle that ensues was both captivating and thrilling, showcasing Baldacci's talent for fast-paced action even in scenes where people are just talking.

This is one of the few novels that have managed to bring me close to tears. However, as my closer friends know, unless a dog dies, my eyes are staying tear-free. Still, there were moments when I was on the brink of succumbing to the heart-wrenching struggles of the Cardinal children. Humor was abundant in the novel, side by side with the moments of tragedy. As Baldacci said in the book, humor can drive a point much stronger than brute force. The characters were flawed and vulnerable, and to see them rise against the odds when everything was stacked against them was a truly uplifting experience.