Author: Marion Smith
Title: Riptide
Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999.
Trade paperback: xii, 191 pp.
(Reviewed by David Harris, Sept. 6, 2018)
This novel addresses an unpleasant topic, sexual abuse of children. It’s difficult to read about this ugly and violent behavior, and I don’t recommend the book for the faint of heart. However, shining a light on sexual abuse, whether of minors or adults, is clearly a very important issue as we have been seeing over the past few weeks with McKenna Denson, who was victimized while she was serving as a missionary in the Mission Training Center in Provo by a sexual predator who happened to be her ecclesiastical authority. Denson is now trying to get justice or, at the very least, an acknowledgement that she was wronged, but the response she has been getting doesn’t seem to me to be a very straightforward one.
I wouldn’t ordinarily seek out a book on this topic, but I’m interested in all things Mormon, and I think my view of Mormon culture would be skewed if I simply passed over books on unpleasant topics like this one. Sexual abuse is certainly not a problem unique to Mormonism, and I hope LDS leadership will take the example of Pope Francis by confronting the problem head on the way he has been doing in his own church. It seems to me he got off on the wrong foot himself in the beginning of his tenure, but he seems now to be confronting the issue in a way that shows that his heart is in the right place.
The book is not all gloom and doom. I like the way the story is told in the present tense from the tense moments before the murder takes place all through the killer’s frantic flight south by car from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to connect with family members and, from there, on to Palm Springs.
When she describes the low hills between Beaver and Cedar City whose outlines are made visible by the moon in the darkness, I feel like I’m right there in the car with her seeing it for myself. And, when she tells the story of the abuse her ex son-in-law has perpetrated upon both her daughters and her grandchildren (who are also his own children) and the lack of cooperation from both the police and the Church in stopping him from abusing again, I feel her rage and have to wonder if I would have acted any differently in her place.
Another thing that makes the book bearable despite the nasty subject matter is the author’s facility with language as she describes the interesting philosophical ruminations that go through the protagonist’s mind as she makes her way south toward California. I’ll share just one tidbit here from page 181 toward the end of the book:
“Nature never manifests as straight or ordered. In nature, everything’s contextual and relative. Murder isn’t straight. It’s a fractal of wobbles and tentative diffused half-patterns conjoining for one brief millisecond: the time it takes to squeeze the trigger, to stop a breath.”
I have to say that I find the ending somewhat dissatisfying. However, perhaps it’s impractical to assume that you can act so decisively against evil, no matter how well-intentioned you are, and not come away paying a price of some kind.
See also earlier AML reviews of this book, by Terry L. Jeffress and Lavina Fielding Anderson.