Book Review: Secrets of Our House

Synopsis:

Desi is the mastermind behind her dream getaway, the Black House. Nestled high into the mountains of North Carolina, it is sleek, luxurious, dark.

And it is a house full of secrets.

For many years, Desi has been guarding secrets about the man she longs for — who is not her husband — and the roots of her family that must never be revealed.

When Desi, her husband, Peter, and Jules, their seventeen-year-old daughter arrive from Chicago to spend the summer in the mountains, the seeds for the tumultuous months to follow have already been planted. Their marriage is on the rocks and this vacation is a last-ditch effort to save it. Jules is falling in love for the first time with Will, a local boy four years her senior, and forging a future that bears no resemblance to the one Desi has envisioned for her. And Carter, the man Desi expunged from her life in favor of Peter, remains on her mind and in her heart.

Desi and those she loves are hurtling toward choices and events none of them will ever be able to undo.

But no matter how hard outside forces shake you, the bonds of family are stronger than the harshest winds. Aren’t they?

Set against the power of the wilderness, Secrets of Our House is a story of domestic drama, long-held secrets, and the strength of family.

Review:

Rea Frey has penned Because You’re Mine, Not Her Daughter, and Until I Find You and four nonfiction volumes. She says her “passion in life is telling stories, connecting with readers, and helping other aspiring authors tell their stories too.” As the founder and CEO of Writeway, she teaches other writers how to become published authors.

Not shockingly, Frey says her latest book, Secrets of Our House, “started with a house.” In 2019, she was invited to the Georgia home of fellow author Emily Carpenter — a large, black house that caused Frey to declare, “This is a great house for a murder!” Ultimately, Frey did not draft a murder mystery. Rather, she crafted an engrossing story about “secrets, lies, and betrayals.” And since she wrote it during the pandemic when most people were spending significant chunks of time in their homes, she “couldn’t think of a more perfect setting” than the fictional Black House that figures prominently in Secret of Our House.

The story opens at the home that Desi designed in the North Carolina mountains just outside the little town of River Falls. She runs a successful interior design firm in Chicago, while Peter, her husband, is a former Marine sniper who has made a career of training urbanites in tactical self-defense. He has also taught their daughter, Jules, to be a survivalist, and she will need those skills as the summer unfolds. Seventeen-year-old Jules is artistic and athletic, an academic achiever who is scheduled to begin her first semester at Columbia University in New York in the fall, majoring in biomedical science. She is painfully aware that her parents’ marriage is in trouble. Their relationship has become increasingly “bitter, silent,” with the two of them growing further apart with each passing day. Desi is lonely in North Carolina, missing the city, its energy, and her work. But she and Peter have agreed to spend the summer at The Black House for the specific purpose of deciding if their marriage can be saved.

Desi is receiving text messages from Carter, the man she loved, but hadn’t seen or spoken with for years until she recently ran into him at a farmer’s market. She regrets having given him her business card because now he wants to get together with her. Worse, she thinks she sees him in town. Desi isn’t “sure if she secretly wants Carter to show up or if that would literally be the worst thing that could happen.” On top of that, her brother, Tommy, has shown up unannounced. Tommy served with Peter and Carter in the Marines and, as a result, has suffered from PTSD and mood swings, struggled with drug addiction, and tends to appear only when he needs money. A drifter, he has just returned from Morocco and will stay with Desi’s family until he decides to move on again.

Secrets of Our House is a tale about choices, and how decisions one makes about life always have consequences. Sometimes the impact of those choices is unforeseen and even unintentional, but there is no escaping the ramifications, even if, as in Frey’s tautly-constructed story, they only manifest many years later.

And for Desi that’s exactly what happens as the story unfolds. Jules has fallen in love with a local pilot, Will, who is four years older than she is. He has a close, loving family, all of whom have rallied around his mother, Lenore, who has terminal lung cancer. Jules loves River Falls and the close-knit community she has become part of — almost as much as she loves Will, with whom she has become intimate. She wants to defer her studies to remain in North Carolina with her father, who dreams of building a survivalist course there. But Desi is determined to keep Jules from making decisions Desi fears she will later regret. Desi, of course, has the benefit of hindsight that Jules lacks. And plenty of regrets of her own.

For Desi, “what was supposed to be a relaxing summer has instantly turned complex.” Carter is communicating with her and stirring up old feelings from which Desi has been running for many years; her brother has arrived without warning; Jules’ relationship with Will is deepening and, from Desi’s perspective, threatening to derail Jules’ future; and Peter is becoming “less and less emotionally unavailable,” despite the fact that they agreed to give their marriage one last try. For Desi, it’s “hard to grasp the totality of her marriage, how it swung from young and naive to seasoned and bitter.”

Good decisions are the hardest. But hard is where the good stuff is.

Desi astutely senses that her past is about to catch up with her and she cannot “escape herself.” To give her emotional conundrum context, Frey details, at expertly-timed junctures, the choices Desi made many years ago, as well as her escalating desperation to keep long-buried secrets from coming to light. “Was her entire life really about covering up who she really was?” she ponders. Frey also explores the factors that played into Desi’s decision-making all those years ago — a desire for “stability and protection;” genuine but very different feelings for Peter and Carter; and copious amounts of guilt about her actions. Desi concluded long ago that “she needed certain and familiar, not wild and unpredictable.” Frey skillfully and compassionately portrays Desi’s inescapable internal struggle to finally and conclusively reconcile the war that has raged between her heart and mind for two decades.

Peter has always been a dedicated father to Jules, but often withdrawn and unreachable in his relationship with Desi. He promised to leave the Marines once they were married, but broke that promise, serving several more tours before finally coming home to stay. Did he have reasons for making that choice about which Desi has remained unaware? If so, why has he never told her the truth? Jules is decisive and committed to the life she is designing for herself, but earnest and loathe to disappoint her parents, especially her mother, in any way. But she is torn when Lenore wisely counsels her, “This is your life As Mary Oliver says, your one wild and precious life. You need to do what you have to do to feel the way you want to feel. . . . You are a human being who has her own desires, wishes, and dreams. It doesn’t matter if you’re seventeen or seventy-five. You want what you want for a reason. So don’t apologize for wanting what you want, Juliette. Ever.” With respect to Jules and her future, Desi is well-meaning but, like every parent, makes mistakes. And her failure to appreciate the impact of her actions on not just her daughter’s life, but others’ lives, as well, could prove catastrophic and heart-breaking.

Frey heightens the dramatic tension and suspense by placing her characters in life-threatening situations that force them to put their differences aside and work together to ensure the survival of those they love most. In the process, revelations — some shouted in anger and frustration at inopportune moments — come amid critical, strategic decision-making. Desi and Peter have also long harbored resentments, jealousy, and anger toward each other and, individually, experienced profound disappointment and sorrow. The truth comes to light as they navigate an unspeakably harrowing crisis in the wilderness that could cost them everything they hold dear.

Secrets of Our House is an absorbing, entertaining, and richly emotional examination of a family that has been careening toward a crossroads — a reckoning — for a long time. Having now arrived there, she illustrates how each character reacts and adapts when the truth is known, and what they decide is best for each of them moving forward. Will they be able to forgive each other, and themselves, in order to forge new, healthier relationships with each other?