The Cost of Sin
Bellon draws on stories her grandmother told to create a novel narrated by Myrtle, a young child in 1905 Utah, whose Mormon mother Ivy married out of the faith, causing family conflict. Ivy’s father, Grandfather Kimball, is a fervent Mormon bishop resentful of Ivy’s choice of husband, claiming she and Jimmy are not truly married. When Myrtle and sister Ruth contract whooping cough, Grandfather separates their baby brother Claude from the family, giving him to relatives to be raised in the faith.
One morning, Myrtle is picking blackberries when she sees her father go into nearby woods, then hears a gunshot. Grandfather claims Jimmy shot himself, but Myrtle doesn’t believe him. Grandfather lets Jimmy linger for days in the barn, then hurries the body away for a secret burial. Ivy, the girls, and her new baby must continue to live with the Kimballs because Ivy has no means of support. Eventually Ivy meets a widower who wants to marry her, and Grandfather encourages her, as Parker is a church member. But Myrtle has a bad feeling about Parker, which may be valid when her mother is found mysteriously collapsed on the floor.
Bellon uses a 1975 frame story in which Myrtle’s granddaughter Sally brings her Catholic boyfriend Luke home to meet Myrtle, to get her approval and learn the family history. I felt immersed in the early Utah parts of the novel; Bellon provides very good details of rural life in the period. I was a bit disappointed in the way the 19-aughts section ends abruptly, with the children on the brink of major life changes, then the final jump to 1975 without telling what happened between. Resilient Myrtle is an interesting character, who says, “the best yarns stretch the truth like taffy.”
