Season of Ice

Season of Ice by Diane Les Becquets. 2008.

In the beginning there was snow.

Season of Ice is a bittersweet novel--more bitter than sweet--about a teen girl, 17 to be exact, Genesis, coming-of-age after her father's tragic accident one winter day. Genesis is a strange-to-me character. She races cars on the ice--the frozen lake near her home. And she's good at it--really good at it. Often if not always beating the men she races against. Her father disappears one day in November. He left her at her Uncle Perry's auto shop. He was going out doing an odd job--a repair job--on the lake. His truck and his boat were found--one that day, one the next--but his body was never found. The search was called to a halt when the ice came, when the lake froze over. Nothing more can be done. Not till the thaw comes. A family's grief becomes frozen in place as well.

Genesis lives with her step mom, Linda, and her half-brothers, Scott and Alex, twins, age 8. Their relationship was tense to begin with, before her father disappeared, before he was presumed dead. Now that he's gone, they're in a holding pattern. Genesis does love her brothers--very much. And they are enough to tie her to this family. But her relationship with Linda is delicate and awkward.

The book is a story (fictional of course) of how she copes with the loss of her father--the grief in all its stages. It's a story of how she reconciles her current life--with all its changes--with her past. She can't go back. Her father is gone. There is no getting that love, that innocence, that happiness back. But she does have to learn to move forward. Somehow. As impossible as that seems. It is a story of her search for acceptance and peace.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews