Everything We Didn’t Say
Everything We Didn’t Say
By: Nicole Baart
[Fulfilling “A book written by someone from your state” as part of the 2021 Fall Reading Challenge.]
“She was the runaway, the prodigal daughter who had split when the going got tough.”
“Juniper harbored the fear that she hadn’t left of her own free will—she’d been pushed out.”
Baart writes what she knows, which includes Northwest Iowa living! I grew up there too, so small rural farming town resonates with me.
As I’m realizing with Baart’s previous books I’ve read (Little Broken Things and You Were Always Mine) she writes a slower story but the mystery is always there. And familial relationships are a big part of her storyline.
In Everything We Didn’t Say, we have alternating chapters Winter- present day and Summer- 14.5 years ago.
Juniper has returned to her hometown of Jericho to help her friend and mentor with the town library, but her ulterior motives involve the unsolved murders of her childhood neighbors all those years ago.
The Murphys were murdered her senior year of high school and her brother was the prime suspect. No convictions would stick but in a small town, it’s hard to shake the reputation. Add to that a renewed interest in this case in the form of a podcast that has surfaced, determined to bring down her brother.
As with all stereotypical small towns, everyone has a secret to hide— including Juniper.
When an accident leaves her brother in a coma, the stakes get even higher. Someone has it out for her brother and if secrets don’t start getting revealed, she may never have a chance to repair all the relationships she needs to and get to the bottom of that fateful night that is still a little blurry in her memory.
The alternating time periods slowly expose what happened that summer that has led to Juniper’s current situation.
Many reviewers didn’t like this, but I thought it was an effective way to build the suspense. I didn’t think it was annoying. I felt it helped develop the characters.
I admit, it did take me a little bit to get into the story. I felt a bit thrown into it trying to get my bearings on what was happening and what the vibe was. But the disorientation was short-lived and I engaged and read the story pretty quickly.
I also felt like she wrapped it up a little too abruptly in the end. I suppose it makes sense to leave some of the questions open-ended for us to fill in the blanks, but it seemed like we jumped right from the climax to the epilogue which occurred a couple months after.
Some reviewers pointed out that there wasn’t much to the podcast aspect of the story and that they wished she had fleshed that out more. I read The Night Swim by Megan Goldin which also incorporates a true-crime podcast, and even though I wanted more from Goldin’s podcast, she gave us more than Baart did. I agree that more on the podcast would have strengthened the story.
A couple things I reflected on as I read was the name of the town- Jericho. It is a fictional town so Baart had to have picked the name deliberately. In the Bible as the Israelites were set to enter the Promised Land, Jericho was the first obstacle they had to conquer. I wonder if Baart envisioned Juniper coming back to her ‘promised land’ (aka coming back for her estranged daughter and repair their relationship) and she had to overcome the obstacle of the unsolved Jericho murders that plagued her life and triggered her separation from her daughter.
Another thought was that Jericho was defeated by the walls falling down. With all the secrets bound up in Jericho, Juniper had to pull the walls down that hid those secrets. People had to be honest and vulnerable to get to the truth. They had to say all the things that they hadn’t said before. When the walls came down, the truth came out, and people were restored.
Lastly, I reflected on the contrast of summer and winter. Baart intentionally labeled each corresponding time period not only with the year differentiated but with the season marked— summer or winter. The murders happened in the heat of summer with the heat of romance and the heat of anger. As she comes back years later with relationships on the rocks, there is cold isolation, she is frozen in time, stuck in the mystery of the past, lacking close relationships. The iciness that flowed from that fateful night has to be thawed.
I don’t know what Baart’s intentions and frame of mind was in writing those things, but it would make an interesting book club discussion!
All in all, I did enjoy this book and would recommend it. I will continue to read her books!
[Sidenote: I just read Nick Offerman’s book Where the Deer and the Antelope Play which briefly discusses pesticides and their effect on the land, water, and environment. I thought it was interesting that that was an important piece to the puzzle of this novel! Apparently I didn’t absorb much agricultural knowledge from my many years in rural Iowa because it made me ponder many questions about farming practices today and what is actually happening back home. It has spurred me to do a little research!]
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