Book Review: Reflections & Echoes
Reviewed by Lisa Lickel on Windy City Reviews.
Chicago native Sandra Colbert's latest poignant short fiction collection features characters who make life-changing and life-challenging choices. Left behind and pushing forward are the answers and those who must come to terms with those decisions' effects.
Colbert explores forgiveness and confession, do-overs, and special people who run the good kind of interference in nine pieces. In the opening story, "The Forgiving," Marty is abandoned and left swimming in fury when her older protector and hero brother is murdered in an apparently senseless act. Colbert deftly weaves a series of points of view together as Marty learns that maybe the act wasn't as senseless as it appeared, and the echoes of her brother's heroism could ripple on if she chooses not to feed her fury. "Voyagers" portrays a well-adjusted young girl reaching out to an immigrant boy with a painful past. "The Letter" is the shortest tale, in which reading a letter became a solemn and cherished ritual over forty years. Other stories showcase a teenager's devastating secret and painful, lonely life in "The Truth."
"A Confession – circa 1949" lightens the mood as we spy on a couple of friends whose paths went in opposite directions but merged later in a lively, messy manner. Through confession and a little nudging toward the road of responsibility, one friend challenges another. In "Second Chances," two best friends, Barb and Donna, confront Barb's past and prove that sisterhood is the last unbreakable bond.
Grandparents and guardians are centric to several of the stories. Babka Mary plays an unforgettable role in "Voyagers."
Grammy steps in to love on Lucy in "November Gray." A widow who is finally free from a zombie existence gets to experience everything she missed, including a surrogate child, in my favorite, "Afterwards. Always on the verge of discovery, Colbert brings two gutsy ladies together who vow to protect each other.
The final story, "Here I Am," plays on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" and is a loving, parental tear-jerker as a father shoos his child from the nest. "I can make it another day," is the father's self-encouraging mantra.
And that's Colbert's message through her thoughtful stories: we can make it. The stories are well told from all perspectives from the 1940s to contemporary times as the reader is invited to jump into segments of people's lives. We are asked to reflect on our challenges and consider how our choices echo long after the words and events evaporate. I highly recommend this for those who love their fiction by the slice.