Book Review: Tethered

Tethered
by Amy MacKinnon
ISBN: 978-0-307-40896-9
Random House, Inc.
ARC 263 pages

From the cover: "Clara Marsh is an undertaker who spends her solitary life among the dead, preparing their last baths and bidding them farewell with a bouquet from her own garden. When she discovers a neglected little girl, Trecie, playing in the funeral parlor and desperate for a friend, her carefully constructed life shifts."

From the start of this book it was clear that Clara was damaged. She was comfortable cleaning, embalming and dressing dead people to prepare them for their services at the funeral home. However, even a casual touch from a living person made her cringe. Throughout the book she often wishes that she could disappear into the walls to avoid interacting with people. It was hard for me to imagine acting and feeling like this. I felt sorry for her. As the book progresses you learn why Clara has built a wall around herself.

Then Clara discovers Trecie, a little girl, playing among the flowers and coffins of the funeral home. Clara doesn't want to, doesn't even know how to, deal with the little girl. She can barely manage to communicate with adults, let alone a child.

Several years before Trecie began visiting the funeral home a little girl had been found in the nearby woods. She was mutilated and never identified. Then a local reverend named her Precious Doe. Eventually Clara and the local police connect Trecie with the people that killed Precious Doe. While Clara attempts to help Trecie she also develops a fragile relationship with Mike, one of the police officers assigned to Trecie's case.

Even though this book is permeated with death, I didn't find it overly gory. Yes, there were descriptions of dead bodies and embalming procedures, but nothing was more graphic than a CSI episode on TV. At the beginning it was difficult to understand how Clara could be so withdrawn, but emotional flashbacks show how she got to that point. Clara always referred to a book with the meanings of flowers as she was preparing a body. Every body was laid to rest with a bouquet of flowers, secretly tucked away in the closed portion of the the coffin, that she felt was appropriate for that person. I really liked this aspect of the book. It added a softness to the raw edges of Clara's character.

Although I couldn't identify with Clara I was fascinated reading about her. I would like to have seen a little of a twist in the ending. Enough clues had been dropped that it was predictable. However the last scene was beautifully written.