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In the recent film Notes on a Scandal, one of the characters remarks that "we
are bound by the secrets that we keep." That sentiment is tailor-made for
the women of Elizabeth Crook's THE NIGHT JOURNAL. Each generation of the Bass
family has their secrets and passes them on to the next generation. Claudia
"Bassie" Bass, headstrong writer and historian, is the daughter of
Hannah Bass, known for her seminal journals of a young woman's life in the Southwest
that have become classics worldwide. Since Hannah died when Bassie was a child,
these journals were the only way she came to know her mother.
Meg Mabry, Bassie's 37-year-old granddaughter, has always cringed under the
spotlight of her family's famous heritage and has never read the journals themselves:
"Bassie had built her life around them [the journals], and founded her
career on them as a professor of southwestern history, transforming them into
these six published volumes that had become, through the years, a kind of cult
literature for lovers of the American West and the Victorian era. Bassie worshiped
her mother and the journals. But for Meg they were a source of embarrassment,
documenting the story of an ancestor whose life had been more dramatic and interesting
than Meg could ever hope hers would be."
When Bassie learns of a new addition being built on the land of her mother's
home in New Mexico, which has now become a museum, she insists that the family
dogs are buried there and they must be exhumed and moved before the building
can begin. Bassie is determined to travel to the family homestead to oversee
the operation, and Meg reluctantly decides to accompany her. Upon their arrival
in New Mexico, they meet up with Jim Layton, an archeologist who runs the museum
and is in charge of the exhumation of the bones. Jim has known Bassie for years
and knows just how to finesse her prickly personality; he soon finds that he
has a great deal in common with the more reticent Meg.
Perhaps it's because she finds herself surrounded by her family's history that
Meg relents and begins reading Hannah's journals. Meg learns of her great-grandmother's
journey from Chicago to the Southwest, her work as a Harvey girl, her marriage
to railroad worker Elliot Bass, and the establishment of the homestead at Pecos.
But when the excavation turns up human bones, everything that was known about
the family is called into question.
Elizabeth Crook, author of THE RAVEN'S BRIDE and PROMISED LANDS, deftly blends
historical fiction and mystery as she tells the story of four generations of
women in the American Southwest. The passages from Hannah's journals illuminate
the experience of a young woman in untamed country, trying to carve out a new
life for herself and feeling conflicted over two important men in her life.
The modern-day story of Meg, her indomitable grandmother and their "push-me,
pull-you" relationship, as well as Meg's flirtation with the married but
troubled Jim, is endearing and realistic. Both Meg and Jim have something to
prove to Bassie and try not to buckle under her strong hand: "Some of us
are living the lives she wanted us to, and some of us are living the lives we
chose in defiance of her wishes. But her influence is still there." Add
to this potent brew the element of mystery in the form of the unearthed body
on Dog Hill, which calls all of Hannah's and Bassie's accounts into question.
With rich characters, a lush landscape, an intriguing mystery and a possible
romance, THE NIGHT JOURNAL grips the reader from the start. As the story alternates
from the 1800s to the modern day, it paints an accurate and entertaining picture
of life as the Bass women lived it.
--- Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller
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