Safe Beginnings by Christine Duncan

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Jun 21, 2000

Christine Duncan boldly takes on a topic few writers want to address: the difficulties of living in a battered women's shelter.

Kaye Berreano is a counselor at just such a place. An almost-single mother (her divorce is pending) working the night shift, Kaye must be sensitive and strong, compassionate and firm. A reader gets a real sense of this character and her flaws aren't annoying - they're human. She wants a cigarette but she doesn't smoke any more. She forgets important details on the night a fire breaks out at the shelter, just like a real person would. She doesn't want her soon-to-be-ex to know he's pushing her buttons. She's a good mom, but doubts her effectiveness. I like her.

Duncan's observations take what could be a tentative issue set in a nowhere town and make them three-dimensional. Anyone who lives where it snows a lot will nod knowingly at her comment on winter drivers. She captures the tension between the divorcing couple - memories of times before things went wrong and the familiarity that comes with knowing someone so well for so long, even if you can't stand them anymore.

And of course, a mysterious fire kills a woman no one likes. Alibis are weak, suspects are many, but investigators think it's a suicide. Kaye digs deeper and deeper and instead of narrowing the possibilities, she finds more questions.

Duncan weaves a great plot and her characters are people, not names. She doesn't rely on clichés or drawn-out descriptions to get her points across and the story itself moves right along. I'm glad to see that this is part of a planned series.

The neat thing about this particular book: It's the first e-book I've reviewed.

Safe Beginnings will be available from Dynamic Patterns in July. ISBN 1-894606-02-7 Price: $5.00 Format: HTML, Plain text