Synopsis:
Three years ago, mortuary cosmetologist Phoebe Glassman lost her husband, Logan McClary, and Ava, their two-year-old daughter, in a tragic vehicle accident. Once a hopeful wife and mother, Phoebe is disappearing into her grief and the solitude of her job — restoring to the dead the illusion of life so that their friends and relatives can say good-bye to them.
Then the body of a woman named Pauline Steele arrives in the mortuary and for Phoebe, everything changes. Because Pauline is unmistakably Phoebe’s mirror image and her arm bears a disturbingly familiar tattoo of a butterfly. Even more startling is that found among Pauline’s effects is a faded photograph of Phoebe.?
Aided by an eccentric colleague, with her curiosity sparked, still-grieving Phoebe’s investigation into her doppelgänger’s life and death. In the process, she uncovers surprising clues to a shared past.
Phoebe’s emotional journey leads to shocking revelations about those closest to her . . . and even herself, driving her down a troubling path and to the brink of delusion from which she may not be able to return.
How much of what she discovers can she trust?
Review:
A. J. Banner is the bestselling author of four previous novels, The Good Neighbor, The Twilight Wife, After Nightfall, and The Poison Garden. Banner describes In Another Light as “suspenseful, bittersweet, layered,” and says the story was inspired when she imagined a woman “seeing her lookalike on a mortuary table.” At that point, she had no idea what the story would be about, but wondered, “What if Phoebe is a mortician or makeup artist? What if her job is to beautify the decedents, to work on their faces to hide the effects of decay?” And, of course,”Phoebe then needed a reason to keep investigating, to delve into her doppelgänger’s background. And to do that, she would need to find evidence connecting herself to the dead woman.” Banner made Phoebe “reclusive, grieving, and need[ing] to embark on a quest and come out of her shell.” And believes her story is “ultimately uplifting and hopeful,” but “starkly realistic, depicting the dark, complex aftermath of grief, loss, and betrayal and one woman’s struggle to find her way back into the light.”
Indeed, as the story of Phoebe Glassman, aged forty-three, opens, she is broken. It’s the third anniversary of the accident that claimed her husband, Logan, and beautiful two-year-old daughter, Ava. Logan owned and operated the mortuary in fictional Bayport, Washington, with his partner, Barry. When Logan died, Barry inherited Logan’s interest in the business, but kept Phoebe on staff as the cosmetologist. Phoebe was a sculptor when she met Logan, but he talked her into giving up her career and attending mortuary school. She hides in the preparation room, focused on the deceased townspeople whose faces she prepares for viewing. Grief is her constant companion; mourning is her way of life. “She prepares to remain in limbo, to act as if she, too, has died. She walks the earth, but she might as well be a phantom flitting through her life unnoticed, disturbing the air but barely registering her presence.” She takes pride in her work, even though she knows that she “creates art from the shell of a person who used to be alive . . . constructing only a vague approximation of life.” She maintains the same routine day in and day out, moving through life mechanically, “as if sleepwalking.” Because like the patients on the table in front of her each day, she is a shell of the person she used to be when she was the mother of a living child. From the outset, Banner’s eloquent, evocative prose draws readers into Phoebe’s shattered psyche and her palpable pain over losing her family.
Phoebe sees the mortuary technicians unloading a body they have picked up from the coroner’s office, and they ask her to come to the preparation room, but not let anyone see her doing so. She is told, “Barry said not to show you. You should take a look. Brace yourself.” The woman on the table is “a younger version of Phoebe, nearly her exact double.” The boy of Pauline Steele was discovered in her car in a local park. She died of an opioid overdose. On her right arm is a distinct tattoo that Phoebe recognizes — a “butterfly in flight. On one side, the wings dissolve “into many tinier butterflies taking off, becoming flower petals as they fly, smaller and smaller, on the cusp of life and death.” Phoebe saw the exact design on Logan’s cell phone and when she retrieves Pauline’s belongings, she finds among them a driver’s license listing an Oregon address, as well as half a color picture stuck to the back of a business card. It’s a photo of Phoebe, taken seven years ago when she and Logan were visiting Seattle — he was in the missing half of the photograph. Phoebe rationalizes that Don Westfield, the coroner and a friend of Logan’s, may simply have overlooked it when inventorying Pauline’s personal effects.
From there, In Another Light moves at a steady, relentless pace as readers learn about Phoebe and Logan’s relationship and marriage, and the accident that claimed him and Ava, leaving Phoebe to grieve her only child. Phoebe was a sculptor when she met Logan, but he talked her into giving up her career and attending mortuary school. Banner’s story is tautly crafted, full of surprising twists and unanswered questions to which Phoebe seeks answers in order to understand why Pauline, who looks so much like her, was carrying that photo with her. And why she was found dead in her vehicle, the doors unlocked.
She thought she had worked through her sorrow — but grief is never finished. It just becomes a part of you.
As Phoebe’s search for the truth unfolds, the information she discovers threatens to drive her further into despair and hopelessness. She is already carrying guilt about Ava’s death, which she has never fully accepted as real or come to terms with — at least, to the extent that any parent can ever come to terms with the death of a child. She is convinced that Ava’s death was her fault. She also engages in magical thinking. Could Logan and Ava still be alive? After all, she was spared the trauma of seeing their bodies by Logan’s colleagues. Could they have participated in an elaborate charade masterminded by Logan? Could Logan be hiding Ava in another town, having assumed a new identity, and keeping Phoebe away from her beloved daughter? She discovers a little girl who looks a great deal like Ava, living with her single father. The more Phoebe learns about Logan’s past, the more convinced she becomes that Ava is alive and she has found her. And, of course, readers hope for Phoebe’s sake that she is right. Banner skillfully ramps up the story’s tension until Phoebe is hovering on a dangerous precipice between reality and delusion, and her actions could have devastating consequences. Of course, by then, readers have taken Phoebe into their hearts, along with Ava, and because Banner “feels at home writing stories with unexpected twists and turns,” she keeps readers guessing about the truth and whether Phoebe will survive its revelation.
Banner compassionately details Phoebe’s psychological journey through grief and renewal. The story is engrossing not just because of the mystery at its center, but because Phoebe is an empathetic, relatable protagonist. Banner explores the power of grief, and how Phoebe has, as the book opens, given herself over to it. But as the story progresses and Phoebe learns that “[a]ll or part of their family life might not have been real,” she must accept how naive she was and how little she actually knew about the man she married, and find out how strong she is . . . if she is to survive.
In Another Light may well be Banner’s best writing to date. She has cleverly penned a riveting thriller at the center of which is a beautifully heartbreaking story about a woman who has suffered the most unimaginable loss. Will she be able to navigate through the grief of burying her beautiful daughter, as well as the life she believed she would enjoy with a man who initially seemed too good to be true? Will she be able to find her way back into the light of joy, laughter, and living? In Another Light is thoroughly entertaining, as well as emotionally gripping and poignant.
Banner observes that writers “toil away in isolation for months or years, pulling a story from the ether, then revising and revising, and hoping in the end to touch readers’ hearts and minds, and keep them turning the pages.” With In Another Light, she succeeds spectacularly.
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