The Secrets She Keeps
Once upon a time, in the first half of the 20th century, women seeking a divorce could move to Nevada for six weeks, establish residency, and get a divorce far more easily than in their home states. Nash has grown up on Tamarosa Ranch, the home-away-from-home that her mother runs for women who come to Reno to get divorced in the 1950s. And eighteen-year-old Nash is in charge of the ranch while her mother is away, helping Nash’s sister.
The tale alternates between 18-year-old Nash and 80-year-old Nash. Her niece, Callie, flees her husband in Seattle when she suspects him of having an affair. Her mother had been pestering her to check on Nash, so the ranch is the appropriate escape. Her sister Shaye joins her there, having her own marital issues. The older Nash is now dying of cancer but determined to make something right, something that happened when she was eighteen.
The dynamic at the ranch in the 1950s is a bit reminiscent of Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women , with a variety of women all shedding their husbands for different reasons. Lilly Marcel is the most fragile of these: married to a powerful, controlling producer, she has escaped him and claimed the child she’s carrying is someone else’s. The present day tale of Callie and Shaye is less compelling—Callie’s husband is seeing a therapist, not having an affair—and while Callie is briefly attracted to another man, her marital issues seem minor compared to what the ranch residents of the 1950s were facing. Caletti deftly evokes that hothouse environment, where disparate women came together under one roof, briefly making a family before each returns to their own lives.
