The Widow Tree
Nicole Lundrigan
Harbour Publishing
312 pages; $22.95
Reviewed by Margaret Thompson
Nicole Lundrigan’s fifth novel, The Widow Tree, is a complex tale of hidden wrongs, of stillborn plans, of betrayal and fatal misunderstandings. Above all, it is about consequences and the long arm of the past. The author chooses a perfect setting for this unsettling story, abandoning the East Coast background of previous novels for a small village in 1950s Yugoslavia, a country which no longer exists, torn apart by festering ethnic and religious resentments after the death of Tito and the collapse of Communism.
The first chapter takes us far back to a military encampment in the Roman province of Pannonia. A centurion dreaming of home and retirement is uneasy, and acting on his premonition, he buries a pot filled with the legion’s pay: “You will be a man’s future, he thought.” The night brings a barbarian attack and the coins lie in their grave for almost two thousand years until they are dug up by three children half-heartedly participating in a student work day in the fields.
Such is the disarmingly simple beginning. The three children, Dorján, János and Nevena, are lifelong friends: the two boys plan to study engineering together; both admire Nevena, but János is determined to marry her some day. The discovery of the coins, though, immediately sets them at odds. Nevena wants to hand them in to the authorities; János wants to keep them. “We’re filthy rich,” he says. “Never again will we live under the frog’s ass.” The two boys decide to bury the coins in a tin containing a little money they have acquired.
The crack in their relationship caused by this dispute is the start of a relentless disintegration. János disappears, and so do the Roman coins. The mystery fosters jealousy and suspicion and terrible guilt. It unravels official brutality, old grudges, reprisals dating back to the war, a menacing litany of corruption and social inequality concealed behind the hierarchy and codes of the isolated village.
Lundrigan also shows us the other side of the coin. We see the fellowship of the women of the village, their strength in the face of adversity, through the relationship between the widow Gitta and Zsuzsi, Dorján’s grandmother. Tibor, a handicapped boy with good reason to hate János, is revealed as a kind neighbour. Even Komandant Dobrica, vile as he is, shines as a parent compared to his snobbish wife.
There are no winners in these conflicts and revelations, just survivors. Nowhere is this more clearly shown than in the irony of the scene where Gitta, János’ bereaved mother, unaware of the havoc he has wrought in her life, walks with the Komandant in the orchard at his ruined childhood home. Gitta thinks nothing will really change: “If they waited long enough, she was certain, everything would be back as it was before.” She is partly right; deception and betrayal have a very long half-life.
The author draws us through the labyrinth of village life, directing our attention to different characters in turn as their pasts collide with their present to mangle their future. The reader follows the dissection of these lives with a kind of fascinated horror—there is little comfort to be found—but the telling is so intense and the writing so compelling there can be no question of setting it aside before the end.
Margaret Thompson is a retired English teacher and past president of the Federation of BC Writers. Her seventh book, a novel entitled The Cuckoo’s Child, will be a Spring 2014 publication.