"Canadian playwright MacDonald follows up the best-selling FALL ON YOUR KNEES, an Oprah Book Club selection, with a sweeping family story that often reads like a thriller. Set during the early sixties on a suburb-like Canadian air force base, the novel pays homage to the optimism of the era and also exposes it as a time of dangerous innocence. Madeleine is an exuberant eight-year-old still attached to her stuffed Bugs Bunny. When her creepy new teacher begins keeping her and other girls after school for "exercises," which gradually morph into full-blown sexual abuse, she feels she cannot talk about it because it is so alien to the sunny, wholesome world of her family. Meanwhile, her straight-arrow father, Jack, has been recruited by his revered former flying instructor, who now works for intelligence, to baby-sit an ex-Nazi scientist; Jack is soon faced with a moral dilemma tinged with the cynical overtones of realpolitik. The characters, family dynamics, and time period are all sharply rendered and tightly tied to the overriding theme of innocence betrayed. But perhaps MacDonald's most impressive accomplishment is her uncanny ability to vividly re-create the wonder, humor, and fears of childhood."
- Booklist (US)
