Where No Gods Came by Sheila O’Connor

I saw this author at the Twin Cities book fest last fall and liked what she had to say. Where No Gods Came, book #36 in my 50 book challenge for the year, is the story of Faina McCoy, returned to her mother in Minneapolis from California, after her father must take an Australian oil-rig job to pay off gambling debts. Faina’s mother is an alcoholic and her sister Cammy is a runaway and a grifter. Faina quickly gets drawn in to taking care of her mother. She struggles through Catholic school and numerous painful encounters. The portrait of Minneapolis is well-drawn, though the names of streets and locations have been switched or disguised. The narrative switches among the characters, but their voices are not distinct. I sometimes had to flip back to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself which person was speaking. In spite of that, the characters were distinct and believably, often depressingly, complex. Much of the novel was quite dark, so I was relieved when Faina, whom I’d come to care about, gained the redemptive ending I thought she deserved.

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