BOOK REVIEW: “The Tiger in the House” by Jacqueline Sheehan (Kensington Books, 320 pages, $15)
Jacqueline Sheehan has a talent for drawing her reader into the emotional lives of her characters. She uses that talent deftly in her new novel, “The Tiger in the House.”
Heroine Delia Lamont is getting ready to leave her job with the Portland, Maine, child-services agency. She is weary of what is known in her profession as “bystander trauma.” She looks forward to a “bright and beautiful” future running a beachfront bakery and café with her younger sister, Juniper.
In her last month on the job Delia’s boss Ira asks her to take on one final case. A five-year-old girl has been found on the side of the road near a murder scene. The child will reveal only her first name, Hayley. Delia’s heart goes out to the little girl, who can provide few details about herself and the crime.
As she tries to help Ira and the local police figure out what happened to and around Hayley, Delia is drawn into a web of memory and crime.
An encounter with her high-school boyfriend brings back recollections of her own difficult youth with an emotionally troubled father—and of the night on which she lost both parents.
Hayley’s situation appears linked with the opioid crisis sweeping through New England. It soon becomes apparent that the little girl’s mother may be alive somewhere. Delia hopes to find that mother before her time at the agency runs out.
Jacqueline Sheehan’s portrait of sisters Delia and Juniper is compelling. Each has her strengths, in and out of the kitchen. Each worries that the other might have inherited some of their father’s instability.
As the book progresses through its suspenseful plot (I stayed up way too late one night to finish it because I HAD to know how it ended!) the sisters learn that perhaps a little bit of instability isn’t such a bad thing.
Delia uses her intuition in her work with children as well as in her baking. Her search for clues about Hayley leads her to take an impulsive, unauthorized trip to Tennessee. And when she bakes she learns to let bread speak to her as she shapes it and puts it in the oven.
Her intuition and the actions it inspires aren’t always rational—but she comes to believe in their validity, and in herself, as she follows her instincts.
In “The Tiger in the House” Jacqueline Sheehan thus manages produce both an engrossing novel and a meditation on living our lives with our hearts as well as our heads.
Jacqueline Sheehan will read from her novel on July 12 at 6:30 p.m. at Boswell’s Books in Shelburne Falls.