Successful LA psychiatrist Julia Cates is watching her career crumble. A suit against her brought by the families of victims of one of her patients has created a media frenzy that asserts, if not her guilt, then at least her incompetence. At the same time, her sister Ellie, police chief in tiny Rain Valley on the outskirts of the Olympic National Forest in Washington, faces a challenge unlike any that has come her way before.
The two sisters are opposites: Julia the smart one who never fit in and left Rain Valley after high school; Ellie the beautiful one, adored by her father and popular in school, who stayed, taking her uncle’s place as chief. They are alike in one way, though: unsuccessful in love. Ellie, whose friend Peanut says suffers from “the curse of the small-town beauty queen,” has burned through two marriages, while Julia’s all or nothing approach to love has left her bruised, alone, and suspicious of men who are too handsome for their own good.
When an emergency call takes Ellie to the park in the small center of town, she finds a ragged child in a tree clutching a wolf pup and refusing to come down. She doesn’t seem to understand Ellie’s words and only growls or howls in response. Eventually lured down with food and sedated, the girl is found to be severely dehydrated and undernourished. The scars on her body indicate beatings and—worst of all—ligature marks around her ankles.
Ellie calls on her sister, not recognising that the “wolf girl” will generate her own media frenzy that will only add to Julia’s problems. The psychiatrist’s patient list has evaporated, so there’s nothing keeping her in LA. However, returning to a town where she never felt at home and must now see her as the failure the rest of the world believes her to be is a challenge in itself.
Their parents now dead, the two sisters must renegotiate their relationship while trying to help the nameless, terrified girl who doesn’t seem to know what a toilet or a bed are and has been separated from her only friend, the wolf cub. They must navigate not only the media but also the small-town gossips and turn them into assets in their search for the girl’s family. Working with the possibly feral child exposes their own weaknesses, strengths, and secrets.
Being set in a small town the world has left behind since the logging has ended, whose inhabitants stubbornly refuse to give up, provides a fitting frame for the story. Living now in a small town myself has made me appreciate the webs of interaction that are different from those in a city.
As with all of Hannah’s books that I’ve read, this book is almost impossible to put down. The emotions that roil the action are true to life and so carefully orchestrated that they engage the reader without becoming either exhausting or melodramatic.
I’ve heard of writers charting the levels of suspense in their novels during the revision phase. Hannah’s masterful work makes me consider charting the emotional temperature of my stories. After a little searching, I’ve found that Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers have a writing craft book about doing just that: The Bestseller Code. Analysing data, they found, among other things, that high-performing books have a similar pattern of emotional highs and lows. I guess it’s no surprise that Magic Hour seems to fit that pattern.
The aspects of the story that most interested me are the wild child’s introduction to society, the relationship between the sisters, and their relationship with the past. I was less interested in the rather predictable romance aspect of the story, but that could also be due to my personal preferences when it comes to books.
This story and its well-drawn characters will stay with me for a long time. It has added more nuance to my thoughts about nature and society. It has made me think more about what we do with our past, how much we let it influence our present. Most of all, it took me in and wouldn’t let me go until the end.
Do you have a favorite Kristin Hannah novel?