A Place to Land

“A Place to Land is an engaging book with enough intrigue . . . to stand alone and keep you guessing . . .”

Aging sisters Violet and Trudy Figg live together in a quaint cottage overlooking Little River in their hometown of Sugar Bend, Alabama. They lead a modest life running the local gift shop, Two Sisters Art and Handmade Goods, where they sell artwork Trudy creates from weathered debris she finds along the shores of the river. Trudy lost her voice as a result of a traumatic event years earlier and can only communicate through writing. Violet manages their shop and indulges her love of birds by conducting surveys for the Coastal Alabama Audubon Society.

Lauren K. Denton’s novel, A Place to Land, moves back and forth between past and present, which works well to unravel the mystery at the core of the book and to convey the reasons Violet and Trudy live the sheltered life they do, with shared loss and secrets.

Violet is 17 years old the night her mother makes her promise to take care of Trudy when she’s gone. Violet agrees, though she doesn’t understand what her mother means until the following day when she comes home from school and finds their mother has deserted them, leaving nothing behind but a handwritten note on the kitchen table:

“Violet, I need you to take care of your sister. You’re the strong one, much stronger than I’ve ever been, and she’s going to need you. I’m sorry to put this on your shoulders, but I trust you and I love you. Remember your promise.”

Abandoned by their mother, Violet and Trudy are left in the care of their abusive, alcoholic father until the day he drinks too much, gets behind the wheel of his car, and is killed when he crashes into a tree. Violet gives up on her dreams of ever leaving Sugar Bend and fulfills the promise she made to her mother to care for and protect her younger sister Trudy, who is now 19 and in the habit of getting involved with the wrong men.

When Trudy falls in love with Jay Malone, a well-liked and respected local businessman, Violet has concerns that he’s not everything he appears to be. She sees subtle signs of his underlying anger and possessiveness when Trudy speaks with another man. Violet tells Trudy her misgivings, but Trudy marries Jay anyway and before long Violet’s suspicions about him are confirmed by his unsettling actions and the telltale bruises on Trudy’s arms.

“No one was surprised when Jay chose nineteen-year-old Trudy Figg, the prettiest girl in Sugar Bend, as the latest Friendly’s Girl. Not even Violet was surprised, though her guard was up and strong. She had seen guys like this shower their attention and affection on Trudy countless times before, and Trudy never seemed to understand that some men needed much more than a woman’s soft hand and gentle smile.”

When the story moves back to present day we meet Frank Roby, a retired police officer who was in love with Violet 40 years ago, and his nephew Justin, a young officer on the Sugar Bend police force. Frank has recently returned to Sugar Bend after being away for many years. When his nephew calls to tell him about an old boat that floated to the surface of the river, Frank investigates and soon realizes the boat had belonged to Jay Malone, who disappeared years before without a trace. Like Violet, Frank shares a love of birds and joins her as a volunteer in the Audubon surveys. As they reconnect, the past and present converge, and long hidden secrets are slowly revealed.

A Place to Land is an engaging book with enough intrigue involving Violet, Frank, and Trudy to stand alone and keep you guessing, which makes one wonder why the author spends so much time on other characters who have nothing to do with the mystery. One of them is Maya, a young woman fresh out of the foster care system who arrives in Sugar Bend and instantly becomes friends with Trudy and Violet, to the point of taking on an integral role in their shop. It’s a bit unbelievable to think that someone could so quickly insert themselves into the carefully guarded lives of Trudy and Violet. Likewise, Tyler, who works at his father’s feedstore, and Cassie, a local girl who chases after him, are not relevant to the mystery at the center of the book.

Besides the presence of superfluous characters, there are other elements readers may find hard to believe, such as a newspaper editor dreaming about things from the past that she had no way of knowing, or pelicans repeatedly depositing tiny fish skeletons in front of Violet. And how could Frank Roby, Violet’s one-time boyfriend and former member of the local police force not know until 40 years later that Trudy was Violet’s sister?

Despite these loose ends Denton weaves a good story and her depiction of Sugar Bend, a sleepy southern town immersed in the natural world, is very satisfying:

“Fish swim against the current, pushing themselves deeper into the rich river water even as the tide sweeps everything else out into the Gulf. Mourning doves float on the water’s early morning surface like ducks, as if the water were a safer place than land. And long-gone memories, thick as the rain-heavy air, tend to come back at the strangest of times, as sharp and clear as if they’d only just happened.”

Images of Trudy scouring the shoreline for treasures she can turn into art, and of Violet enjoying the simple chorus of birdsong from her back porch, are very real and help tell this story of two sisters who are forever bound together by their past.