With her mother's last words still echoing in her ears, Tyler Jones, the San Francisco-based newspaper columnist and amateur sleuth introduced in The Other Side of Silence, journeys to the family home in northern Minnesota. A satisfying read overall, and I'm curious what the final installment in the trilogy has to offer. Given that context, I'm not sure why Tyler makes the occasional odd reference to her dog and herself as a 'slut' for being friendly / speaking multiple dialects.

As with the previous novel, the book doesn't run under the tagline 'Feminist Mysteries' because its protagonist is a woman Drury makes clear the plot's relationship to misogyny and male power. (Best moment-when she finally meets Hank and Ellie, an older pair of sisters everyone's been telling her she'll love, and realizes that they're both lesbians: 'My god, I thought, have I got a couple of old-time dykes living right next door to me?') Surrounded by newfound friends, Tyler begins to unravel her family's mystery, a historical drama reaching into the present. Though far from her native San Francisco, Tyler quickly forms a bond with the rural community she finds. Urged by her dying mother to 'shake the skeletons in the closet,' Tyler heads to the family home she's inherited on the shores of Lake Superior.

The sequel to finds protagonist Tyler Jones in her maternal hometown in Minnesota. Winner of a Minnesota Book Award, the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award, and a Midwest Book Achievement Award. There are bodies, of course, but the real mystery in Silent Words is about the secrets that hide and fester in family histories and hearts. She explores the meaning of family in its many guises, the complexity of human nature regarding our notions of good and bad, and the lengths to which the living will go to protect their dead. As Tyler attempts to fulfill her mother's deathbed wish, she unearths layer after layer of half-truths, legends, and lies accumulated over the years and passed down through the generations, binding some members of this community to a conspiracy of silence. Tyler, directed to find the truth, has no inkling what truth she is supposed to search for in this idyllic haven perched on the edge of Lake Superior.

Silent Words by Joan M. Drury