Customer Reviews

Windfalls: A Novel

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One comes to Windfalls with high expectations after reading Hegland's first novel Into The Forest. No one will be disappointed. Hegland has woven a beautiful tale perfectly patterned with great characters and story lines.

The story alternates between Anna when she is in college and finds herself pregnant, and Cherise, at 15 and also pregnant. Each girl chooses a different path and way to deal with their pregnancies. What I liked about it is that it wasn't a novel where the author has decided that because this character chose a certain route then her life is predetermined for her and has to be a certain way. We follow their lives for many, many years and through other pregnancies and life changes.

It is absolutely beautifully written, with amazing metaphors and descriptions, something the faithful expect from Jean Hegland. I give it the highest rating of five, simply because there aren't ten.

This novel written by a local Sonoma County author, Jean Hegland, is an incredible read. It took me into the lives of two women, their children, their troubles and their personal journey. As I read, I came to know these two women, care about them and eagerly await my quiet time with them each evening. Last night, I finished the book and set it down with the sadness of losing a close friend.
A piece of work is art to me when it surpasses its medium and provides me with a quality of emotion or a uniqueness of thought I didn't have before. Windfalls was both of these for me. I lived the life and felt the emotions of Anna and Cherise. At one point early in the story, there was a scene so vivid and devastating that I had to avoid the novel for several days to recover my perspective. Of course, I know these things happen, but I'm normally able to keep them at a distance. Not so with Hegland's work. She writes up close and personal and her heart shines through from the words on each page. And even during terrible events, she moves her characters forward through their heroine's journey like she's holding a baby bird and teaching it to fly.
In a limited sense, the story is about motherhood. And it is written about women but not necessarily just for women. Her birthing scenes brought me back into the delivery room where I witnessed the births of my last three children. So in the larger sense, the story is about human parenting.
The artistry of a novel also lives in the crafting of its words, and it is Hegland's choice of words, her similes, her descriptions that kept me intrigued and stirred my emotions as though I were reading poetry. But it goes further, because the right gathering of words can have a rhythm, a magic balance between the sounds so that they sing and for me, this novel was a song.
Finally, both Anna and Cherise are protagonists in the story, and I realized as I put the book down for the last time, that I knew more about Anna because of the kind of person she was. Yet Cherise was the more unusual and more interesting character, and in a subtle way, she was the predominate protagonist because of who she wasn't.
Reviewed October 5, 2004

Anna, an unmarried and pregnant college student in Washington State braves a crowd of protesters to get an abortion. She's relieved to resume her schooling and the photography she loves, but she never minimizes the loss of life. Soon she drifts into a general depression, burning her photographs and unable to shoot more. Her life seems as empty as her body.

California teenager Cerise punishes herself for her forlorn awkwardness by burning her wrists on a hot iron. Feeling grateful for the attention and yet disconnected from what's happening, she sleeps with a boy she meets. Soon, she's pregnant and being counseled in a LifeRight office. Cerise informs her angry mother that she will keep her baby, and the LifeRight people help her move into her own apartment and apply for welfare. Despite her sudden popularity at school due to her exotic condition, she's soon too tired to care. She drops out of school and doesn't care when her boyfriend finds a new girlfriend.

Ten years pass. Cerise is now cleaning a nursing home to support her beloved daughter Melody. Despite her poverty, she takes joy in her little family. Anna is equally content --- married, living in her grandparents' old house, and expecting a child.

Life takes a downward turn for both women, however. Anna finds herself pregnant with her second child just as her husband loses his job. They are forced to move to California, away from family and friends. Anna's second daughter has health problems at birth, while her older child has trouble adapting to her new school. Anna has never regained the art that sustained her at one time; she can no longer lose herself in her photography.

Cerise struggles with Melody, who has become a hostile teenager. When Cerise consoles herself with a boyfriend, she finds herself pregnant. Travis is born, and his father vanishes. In an attempt to better herself, Cerise starts college. But an unbearable tragedy strikes soon after Melody leaves home forever. Cerise escapes to the forest, meeting a woman who tells her, "Healing is the human task. Your job is to heal." Cerise, homeless and nearly senseless with desperation, walks miles alone in her quest for healing. Her journey eventually leads to meeting Anna, now a college teacher, and the women draw power from the intersection of their lives.

Since I read Jean Hegland's first novel, the amazing INTO THE FOREST, I've been eagerly anticipating her second. WINDFALLS, in many ways a totally different work, continues her theme of how difficult yet possible survival is, no matter how far we fall.

If you're looking for a lighthearted feel-good escape, try another book. This is a hefty, thought-provoking, densely plotted tome, filled with intense tragedy and subtle uplifting redemption. Some of the devastating events that befall these two women are almost physically painful to read. There were moments when I nearly closed the book for good because of the bleak subject matter. But by then I was in the power of a master storyteller and firmly entrenched in these women's lives --- I had to find out what happened to them. I persevered and was glad I did. The tremendous emotional payoff was more than worth it.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

Anna and Cerise - two young women who end up pregnant, two different choices, two different lives. They don't know one another in the beginning of the book but by the end, each knows no one better.

Their lives aren't parallel in style or nature, but their stories are told in a parallel style which is done well by Hegland. As we watch their lives change and develop, we become their friends. We share their unhappiness, their fears, their concerns. We understand what is happening and wish we could help them.

I found this book to be powerful in its presentation and beautiful in a sharing, compassionate way. Reading it will be a windfall for you as a person.

The opening page has three quotes.

First, one by Adrienne Rich:
"Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother, one of those givens, when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself."

Next, by Henri Cartier-Bresson:
"Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance which can make them come back again."

Last, one by Adam Zagajewski -- and I'll let you find that one on your own, leaving you something to look forward to. Just to give you a hint, it is a poetry of words about light and nature, and more.

If these words move you, then welcome to the opening of an urgent and important tale that will be hard to forget. The first chapter, a lovely piece called "After all" sets such an exquisite tone for the story that Hegland is about to reveal to the reader. The first several chapters are titled after the last words in that chapter, a refreshing and intriguing effect, imprinting their meaning upon us.

I found the first review by Publishers Weekly revealed more than I would have about the plot turns and if you haven't yet read it(that review) -- skip it. You'll enjoy a few more surprises, though I wouldn't say the author sets this book up as a suspense in order to keep you turning pages to find out what happens as much as she gathers your compassion and your thoughts about her themes to share the journey of her characters.

When I finished this book, I immediately went back to page one to read the first two pages over again, the chapter "After All". There is some structuring of events in this novel that some might find arranged in a step by step format but Hegland's efforts here ring true to me. It doesn't feel contrived to fit what she is working towards as much as it falls into place to produce her portraits of two women and their separate choices with resulting consequences and something like fate mixed in.

I would expect most if you are interested in the mothering process that this book alone will interest you and keep you reading. It's one of the few books I've read that gives a realistic portrait of the themes that are covered (won't say what they are, I don't want to spoil it) Additionally, if there is an artist inside of your soul, or you are sensitive to art - photography, drawing, writing - this book will snag itself under your skin and make you itch at the same time as you sense its beauty.

It's surprising how few people have apparently read or reviewed this book; if you like it, pass it on, share it so it can stir the wonder of more people.

"Windfalls" tells the stories of two young women in the 1970s who dealt with unexpected pregnancies in different ways, and the impact their choices had upon their lives in the decades the followed.

Anna, a grad student with a promising career in photography, chooses to have an abortion. She never tells anyone about it, and although she eventually marries and gives birth to two little girls, Anna's lost child is always at the back of her mind.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, 15-year-old Cerise decides to become a single mother. She goes on welfare, drops out of high school and eventually gets a mundane job at a nursing home to provide for her daughter Melody, whom she adores.

But Melody isn't a loving little girl forever. Barely into her teens, she becomes rebellious, tattooing her face, having sex and smoking pot as Cerise begs her to learn from her mother's mistakes. Naturally, she doesn't, opting instead to run away with her hippie friends. Meanwhile, Cerise - who ended up having another baby, Travis, with an unreliable man - is left to mourn and struggles to hold her life together.

When a tragedy causes Cerise to lose both Travis and her home, she takes to the streets, crazed and desperate to find her daughter. Within a short time, she has become essentially unrecognizable to the world as anything but a homeless woman, pathetic and meant to be ignored. To top off her pain, she can't stop thinking about her dead son and her missing daughter, with whom she has never been able to reconnect.

As Cerise's life hits its ultimate low and she wonders if she'll make it through the day, her path collides with that of Anna, who needs a babysitter for her young daughters. Cerise reluctantly agrees, and it's quickly apparent that both Lucy and Ellen are thriving from their new caregiver...who is also beginning to heal slightly from re-entering society.

Then Cerise spots a newspaper photograph that gives her a new lead on Melody's whereabouts, and she knows what she has to do.

Overall, the stories of the two women are solid, well-written and intriguing. But, the back cover description promises their lives will come together, and I spent 75% of the book waiting for that moment. It was a little jarring, moving between Anna's and Cerise's individual stories for such a long time with no apparent connection between them except their pregnancies. Even when the two finally met, I couldn't help thinking that their stories were separate for such a long time that it didn't really come together all that well. In my mind, it almost seemed like two completely different books, forced together, and it didn't really work as well as it might. Either Ms. Hegland should have found a way for the two to meet sooner in the story, or else opted for each character to have her own book.

I had anxiously awaited Hegland's second novel, having thoroughly enjoyed her first, Into the Forest, and was not disappointed. She presents a fascinating view of motherhood from a totally different perspective than I have seen before. Even as a non-mother, I was drawn into the inner feelings of both main characters in a way that was unexpected. The tale is woven beautifully with intricate details of both setting and characters intertwined throughout. A truly excellent novel I recommend most highly.

Into the Forest is one of my all time favorite books, so naturally I was excited to see Hegland had a new novel out. So, what took me so long to read it? The cover.

Something about this cover, and the theme of motherhood, made me picture my Aunt Dot's house on Easter. (I wish you knew my Aunt Dot ... )

I can assure you, this is nothing like Aunt Dot's (or Aunt Bunny's or Aunt Kitty's - and yes, I'm serious about my Aunt's names) house on Easter.

This book hits on a very profound level. It deals with the honesty of motherhood, of the fears and pains, the hopes and disappointments - enmeshed with deep love. The writing is amazing, and the characters are exceedingly well drawn. Lucy was a perfectly realized child. The way she talks, and her views on life. It would be impossible not to fall in love with her.

This book was not quickly written and it shows. The attention to detail and emotional depth could only come with something that was given time to breathe.

I look forward to Hegland's next work, even if it isn't out until sometime ... (ready?) Into the Future.

Since Into the Forest is one of my all time favorite books, I was excited to see that author Jean Hegland had another novel. A different kind of story but she once again captures the subject in such a moving way. This book will make you give your child an extra hug each evening (and hopefully be less judgemental of those who stuggle as young mothers).

Renowned photographer Anna Walters loves her work, delights in being wife to college professor Eliot and raising their daughter Lucy. Her only blight is the abortion she once had. However, her idyllic lifestyle begins cracking when Eliot fails to attain tenure. Anna goes through a difficult birthing of their second child. As baby Ellen remains in intensive care, Anna becomes deeply depressed and has nightmares about the child that never was adds to her misery and self loathing.

When Cerise became pregnant in high school, she dropped out to raise her daughter Melody alone as the father Sam moved on to some other teen. To provide food and shelter, she works as a cleaning woman at a nursing home. Cerise liked her life with her little buddy, but lately an adolescent Melody has become disrespectful, nasty, and hangs with a bad crowd. Like her daughter who has found solace in promiscuous sex and drugs, Cerise has an affair that leads to a newborn Travis. As she struggles to earn money once welfare to work kicks in and takes her off the roles, Melody runs away and Travis dies in a fire. Not long afterward Cerise meets and commiserates with fellow lost soul Anna.

Though the action is nonexistent, WINDFALLS is a profound look at motherhood, but not through an apple pie lens. Instead, the two protagonists are undergoing difficult trials and tribulations that would test Job. The story line contains the two subplots that merge when the lead characters meet. Secondary players are not as fully developed as Anna and Cerise as they only serve the purpose of enabling the audience to scrutinize modern day moms trying to mentally survive.

Harriet Klausner