Dodging and Burning

Starred review from January 15, 2018
Complex and multilayered, Copenhaver’s outstanding debut combines a murder mystery with a coming-of-age tale. In 2000, Bunny Prescott, a mystery author living in Washington, D.C., receives an old crime scene photo in the mail from an anonymous source. The photo, which she recognizes, moves her to get back in touch with a person she knew long ago, Ceola Bliss. Flash back to the summer of 1945 in Royal Oak, Va. Jay Greenwood, a wounded soldier and avid photographer, shows Bunny, then 18, and Ceola—the 12-year-old sister of his best friend, Robbie, who died in WWII—a picture he took of a dead woman he found in the woods outside Royal Oak. When the three go look for the body, they find only a pair of bloody shoes. Jay’s connecting the photo to a missing woman in a nearby town raises more questions that Jay is hesitant to answer. Copenhaver’s darkly lyrical exploration into the consequences of war—and prejudice—in small-town America will resonate with readers long after the last page is turned. Agent: Annie Bomke, Annie Bomke Literary.

January 1, 2018
Virginia, 1945. Young photographer Jay Greenwood arrives for an appointment to photograph a young woman, only to find her lying dead in a forest clearing. Quickly he photographs the corpse and, hearing a noise in the woods, flees the scene. Later he returns with friends, 12-year-old Ceola and the wealthy Bunny, only to find the body gone! Whodunit and then who removed the corpse? Quixotically, the three decide to solve the two-pronged mystery themselves. It's subsequently revealed that Jay is gay and that he and Ceola's older brother, missing in action in the war, had been lovers. Thus, the mystery also becomes an examination of gay life in the 1940s, a story that is arguably more interesting than the mystery itself, which is unnecessarily diffuse. The setting, however, is well realized, and, interestingly, in its diction and syntax, the book reads as if it might itself have been written in the 1940s. Though motivations are sometimes shaky, and the ending requires a strenuous suspension of disbelief, the story is interesting enough to hold readers' attention to its problematic end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2018

Fifty-five years after the events that turned their lives upside down, Bunny Prescott writes to her childhood friend Ceola Bliss, asking if she also received a photograph of a murdered woman. In alternating chapters, the two women recount what happened in the summer of 1945 in a small Virginia town. Mourning the loss of her brother who had gone down with his ship in the Pacific, 12-year-old Ceola spends time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, who shows Ceola a photo of a woman he found dead in the woods. Bunny tags along with them, and the trio discover the body has disappeared. While Ceola wants to play detective, the slightly older Bunny suspects there's something more happening. Family secrets, fears, and hatreds are uncovered, and events escalate until they explode in violence. VERDICT Copenhaver, who writes a crime fiction column for the Lambda Literary website, makes a powerful debut with this unconventional novel that mixes a coming- of-age tale with a puzzling mystery and a haunting portrait of the experiences of the LGBTQ community in the 1940s. Admirers of William Kent Krueger's Edgar Award-winning stand-alone, Ordinary Grace, may appreciate this candid story.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

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