Dealing with loss, grief, and the balm of love
On the first Saturday of June, my friend John and I were just leaving McKay Used Books in Manassas, Virginia, when I spotted a woman young enough to be my granddaughter seated at a table topped by a couple of piles of books.
Having self-published five books myself and having hosted author signings for others in my days as a bookseller, I instantly connected with this scene. Before me was a writer who’d doubtless put heart and soul into words on a page, and had gotten up the nerve to share what she had discovered with sidewalk strangers.
Her name was Aryn Wicka, and her novel, as she explained to me when I inquired, belonged to the genre of romance. Though Nicholas Sparks is about as close as I come to reading that category of fiction, on a whim born of sympathy I purchased a copy of “Tethered” (Mascot Books, 2022, 272 pages).
The story begins with the funeral of Joel Stephensen, a mechanic and husband to Danielle, or Dani as she is called. Their relatively short marriage ends when Joel, an alcoholic and a drug addict, crashes his car, killing not only himself but a teenage driver in the accident. At the funeral we meet Joel’s older brother, Nathan, a middle-school teacher. As we quickly learn, Nathan is much more grounded in his concern for others than Joel ever was. It’s also at the funeral that we receive the first hints of his strong feelings for Dani.
As Dani recovers from her initial shock and grief over Joe’s death, we learn more about her past, how she met Joel at the restaurant where she works, details about him and his family, and details as well about Dani’s strained relationship with her helicopter mother, Cindy, and her emotionally distant father, Greg. We meet Chantal, Dani’s best friend who also works at the restaurant, a 77-year-old customer, Phyllis, whose wisecracks contain a good bit of wisdom, and some of Nathan’s friends, including the despicable lowlife, Paul.
With the passage of time, the affection Nathan has so long felt for his brother’s widow becomes mutual. Dani tries tamping down her feelings for Nathan, mostly because she’s afraid that any connection beyond friendship might scandalize others. Once they do begin dating, Dani insists they keep their relationship a secret, which soon becomes a major source of contention between them. Later in the story, we learn that Nathan has also kept a secret from Dani, which when revealed nearly destroys her love for him.
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Now, for some specifics.
One part of “Tethered” that I found amusing as well as educational was Wicka’s portrayal of Cindy Davis, Dani’s mother, a woman of affluence accustomed to getting her way. As Dani says of her life as an only child, “My mother always controlled everything I did when I was growing up. I’m convinced she didn’t really want a daughter as much as she wanted a doll.” For most of the novel, Cindy offers only snark and criticism to her daughter, and so serves as a prime example to grandparents and to parents of grown children of how not to behave. As a father of four married children, and grandfather to a busload of kids ages one to 18, I confess I have many times inserted my foot into my mouth while blathering advice. Unintentionally or not, Wicka reminds us that moderation and restraint go a long way toward maintaining peace between the generations.
Then there are the sex scenes, which puzzled me at first as I wasn’t sure what Wicka intended by them. In both film and literature, most sexual encounters either get in the way of the plot, sometimes humorously so, or act as cheap titillation for the audience. Curious, I explored a bit online and stumbled across an article “Ask the Editor — Sex Scenes in a Romance Novel.” According to editor and writer Shelley Thrasher, descriptive accounts of two people hitting the sheets are highly recommended for the genre of romance fiction.
But maybe there’s a better way of depicting intimacy and love. In his novel “A Soldier of the Great War,” for instance, Mark Helprin describes the reunion of Alessandro, an aristocrat and ex-soldier, with the love of his life, Ariane, after a long search has brought them together again. He holds his lover in his arms, naked from her bath, her towel fallen away, their infant son clinging to her as she weeps, overcome with amazement and joy. That scene is as sensuous as any written in literature.
To be fair, in the case of Dani and Nathan, Wicka may have intended her descriptions of their passion as a comment on their relationship. Most of the bedroom scenes between the two involve makeup sex, a reconciliation after yet another misunderstanding. So perhaps Wicka’s point is that touch and flesh make for better apologies than frail words. Whatever the case, if Dani and Nathan continue their squabbling into old age, they will at least be assured of a lifetime of passionate lovemaking.
That quibble aside, here are the strengths of “Tethered.” Aryn Wicka has created vivid characters. She handles family dynamics well. Her description of Dani’s grief over Joel — not just his death, but the wreckage he brought to their marriage — feels real. Most importantly of all, Wicka kept me coming back to the book, eager to see what might happen next. To my mind, that’s key to any work of fiction worth reading.
Finally, the ending of “Tethered” delighted me. I won’t spoil that final scene for readers, but will only note that Wicka began her story with death and a funeral and concluded with joy and a celebration of life.
Aryn Wicka clearly has talent and knows the meaning of hard work. Put those two ingredients together, mix in a good dose of persistence, and we should expect that one day on that sidewalk table there will be two, three, four, and more books awaiting her fans and readers.
(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
