The Kept

Summary (from the publisher): In the winter of 1897, midwife Elspeth Howell returns to her isolated farmstead to find her husband and four of her five children murdered. Before she can discover her remaining son Caleb, alive and hiding in the kitchen pantry, she is shot.

Caleb must nurse his mother back to health, cleaning her wounds and keeping her fed, before he and Elspeth leave their home to seek retribution from the men who committed this heinous crime. As they travel from country to town to hunt the murderers, the reader learns of Elspeth's deep secrets, that she has kidnapped the very children who call her mother, and questions her role in the novel's initial violence, while Caleb is confronted with the ways of a world he's never known. The line between justice and vengeance is thrown into question as Caleb and Elspeth are forced to reconsider their relationship and what unknown future lies ahead for both of them.

The Kept is a portrait of both maternal obsessions and a primal adolescence in a brutal world. Fans of True Grit's Mattie Ross and All the Pretty Horses's Jimmy Blevins will love Caleb Howell, the next great old-beyond-his-years protagonist of an unforgettable literary Western...this time set in the icy wilderness of the East Coast.

Review: I received an Advance Reader's Edition of this book from HarperCollins.

This novel is grim: tiny blonde children are shot in the forehead, bodies fly through the air and land in the snow, noses crack, the thud of bullets meeting flesh is heard, and giant blocks of ice crush skulls. This novel feels cold both in setting and characterization. Snow falls endlessly and mothers are separated from their children. Scott has imagined a desolate setting for his characters.

Set near the turn of the twentieth century, the key players in this novel are Elspeth Howell and her son Caleb. Elspeth is a midwife, who leaves her husband and five children for long stretches of time on their isolated farmhouse to travel long distances to earn money. Upon returning home in the winter of 1897, Elspeth finds the cold bodies of four of her children and her husband. Only her 12 year old son Caleb survives. Caleb and his mother decide to leave to seek revenge on the men who shot and killed their family, however, along the way Caleb learns the truth about Elspeth and the lies he was told about his family and is exposed to the gruesome reality of a world filled with deceit, murder, and a multitude of sins.

Early in the novel, it becomes obvious that Elspeth and Jorah's family is not what it appears: "They look nothing like us,' Jorah said, [...] 'Whose children are these?' (54). However, this novel shows that family relationships are more nuanced than simply blood relatives. "Instead of giving thanks for what she'd been spared, she grew angrier at what had been taken from her, and a hunger grew deep in the pit of her - in the imaginary womb where she carried and bore the children she'd taken as her own - to find the men responsible" (69). Even Caleb, whose relationship with Elspeth has always been distant, and who perhaps more than anyone has a right to be angry, comes to the same conclusion. "They were my brothers and sisters. They were to me" (315). No matter how many wrongs were committed in creating it, to Caleb and Elspeth their family was what they made of it and they could not forget the murdered members of their family tree.

At heart, this novel is about how one mistake can multiple to create a vast number of acts. It is about family ties above all else. It is about the cruelty of  a world that robs children of innocence. It is about what it means to be a mother. Elspeth, who came from a cold, cruel family and who could not have children herself, yearned to create a family through the miracle that is a new child - a new opportunity to start over; because when new parents' eyes first see their child it "made Elspeth understand that no mistake existed that this joy could not undo" (141).

In the end, this novel was too dark and gruesome for me to truly enjoy. There's very little redemption in this book. Furthermore, despite the emphasis on family, no deep relationships seem to emerge in this book, although Caleb and Elspeth do grow closer after their ordeal. However, it was not enough for me to be able to relate to the characters or the dark, cold, murder-filled world in which they live.

Stars: 3