Macy Miller is a dutiful wife and mother: She raises her two kids, keeps a clean home, and looks after her husband, Chris, when he stumbles home drunk every night. On one such evening, Macy elects to break with routine. Inebriated, Chris falls down outside, and Macy watches silently as his body is buried by the snow. Chris survives, albeit in a hypothermic coma. While her husband lies in the hospital, Macy reflects on her choice to let him die: “She had crossed an invisible line inside herself, and the realization of what she was capable of was as significant as the act itself.” As Schrader’s well-paced story unfolds and Macy’s past indiscretions come to light, it becomes clear that her actions on that night were not truly out of character. There is a “beast” inside of her, one that craves an intense life, but she has instead chosen stability. As a teen, this beast manifested in acts of self-harm and an assault on a boy who is now the detective investigating Chris’ accident. Later, Chris awakens and is spiritually reborn. His resultant commitment to sobriety and God culminates in new careers for him and Macy as Christian influencers. As Macy is thrown back into the mundanity of her life, her secret urges for a different existence threaten to again rise to the surface. Schrader deftly examines the peril of hiding one’s true self and the struggle to maintain the masks we wear in society. His prose is evocative without being overwrought; describing Macy’s beast, he writes, “It lived…In the depths beneath the oak trees. In that half-second of eye contact with the mud-slicked man whose teeth had gleamed in the shadows. Something has been passed to her. Something that had never left since.” This well-crafted novel combines the excitement of a thriller with the insight of character-driven literary fiction.
