I was blown away by Chris Whitaker’s newest book, All The Colors of the Dark, so I am working my way through his back catalog. We Begin At the End is another powerful read!
Duchess Day Radley is a young girl growing up in a small town like so many others these days, fighting off the encroachment of the future and trying to keep things the way they have always been. She presents as a tough cookie, a hard-case outlaw, but this is a defense against all the crap that’s been thrown her way throughout her young life. She is fiercely protective of her younger brother Robin and tries her best to look out for her wayward mother, Star.
The other main character, as I see it, is Walk. He’s the town sheriff in a town with very little crime and the de facto father figure for Duchess and Robin, though he’s not their biological father. He tries to do what’s right, and at times his optimistic view hurts him when reality crashes in.
The most compelling character for me in the book is Vincent. As kids, Walk, Martha, Vincent, and Star were inseperable. Their lives are upended by a horrible event that is, at minimum, the fault of Vincent. He is sentenced as an adult, though still a minor, to a lengthy prison sentence.
The story really gets going when Vincent is released from prison after 30 years. Walk picks him up and brings him home to Vincent’s family home, where Vincent attempts to start over. It’s clear he’s carrying a lot of burden from what happened when they were kids, and it’s also clear he’s not willing to forgive himself for it, even these many years down the road.
There are villains – most notably Dickie Darke, who is a shady character who runs a bar where Star makes her living. He has his hand in a lot of other things, and these other things drive a plot point that is tensely written – the ominous cloud over Duchess and Robin. When that plotline come to an end, it’s heartbreaking for all involved, even the villain.
This is a gorgeously rendered story of heroes and villains, and the family we are born to and the family we choose. It’s a story of forgiveness and the inability to forgive oneself. It’s a twisty book, but the twists are believable and add greatly to moving the story forward. I did not see the ending coming in any way, and it broke me.
Go get this one, folks. This is going to be a book I think about for a long time, just as All The Colors of the Dark is. Chris Whitaker is an author to follow, and I’ll continue reading my way through his works.
The Amy Experience 