TWINE, a common household item and in this first novel by Dorriah Rogers, an unpredictably rich source of meditation, metaphor, and meaning in her examination of a dysfunctional family at the brink of collapse. The narrator is a single mother who has recently endured her third divorce, and is asking herself questions about her direction in life and the consequences of her troubled childhood. Her soul searching becomes an onslaught of painful memories when she is called on to visit her elderly parents in their squalid home. This central character's childhood was a virtual nightmare in which she and her younger brother were subjected to persistent physical abuse at the hands of her father. Meanwhile her alcoholic and emotionally detached mother stood by and allowed the violence, often out of fear that she might also become the target of her spouse's rage. Her mother is now nearly bedridden, and close to her end. The father performs the duties of caretaker for his dying wife, but he lives in denial of the pain that he has inflicted on his family. As the story of TWINE unfolds, the narrator is confronted with the task of somehow rectifying the emotional trauma that she has undergone. The urgency of the matter is not only to preserve her own sanity, and to prevent the family legacy of violence from affecting yet another generation in her young daughter. Time may have already run out. TWINE is an often brutal exploration of the violence, sexual abuse, and neglect that goes on behind closed doors, in households from all walks of life. It openly discusses the emotional scars, not unlike the PTSD suffered in war, which family members carry with them throughout life after being trapped in a domestic situation with an abuser over a prolonged period. Although its substance is often very dark, TWINE is an elegant piece of writing, largely expressing the story through an interior monologue alternating between the present day and past events. Dorriah Rogers paints a convincing picture of a family crisis that has been brewing across decades.
