Little Ships

Little Ships begins with drama—the death of a young mother. Yet this novel’s real impact comes from the undramatic, understated way it probes the complications of family and love.

That tone is especially on-target for describing the empty life of Nick Becker (a chain-store pharmacist in Oregon), his wife Karin, and their two daughters, 13-year-old Juni and 12-year-old Tilde. While Nick works long hours traveling among stores, Karin essentially lies around their filthy apartment, stoned, asserting herself only enough to buy expensive jewelry hawked on TV.

Then, abruptly, she dies of an undefined infection.

As Nick plunges into depression and drugs, the two grandmothers step in to take care of Juni and Tilde. That turn of events brings out their long-unacknowledged rivalry.

Eleanor, Nick’s mother, is well-intentioned but can’t stop micromanaging the lives of everyone around her. She insists that Juni, Tilde, and Nick must all stay together, even if that means she is now overseeing their daily upkeep, along with working at her job as a high school attendance counselor plus helping Nick’s divorced sister Alison, who has moved into Eleanor’s crowded house with her own young daughter.

Juni, though, resists Eleanor’s efforts and constantly turns to Helve–Karin’s Swedish-born and widowed mother. Helve is only too happy to open her lonely home to her granddaughter.

The main problem with this novel is that it tries to explore too many relationships and complications. In addition to the plot lines mentioned above, Juni is alienated and bullied at school; Alison’s ex-husband threatens a custody fight; her stepson from a new marriage is seriously injured in a car accident; Helve uncovers a family secret that upsets her view of her own marriage and her financial assumptions; Eleanor’s marriage to Walter was recently shaken by suspected adultery; Walter’s hardware store faces bankruptcy; Eleanor’s neighbor’s dementia is getting worse, and her tenant has failed to pay his rent; Eleanor has become increasingly unsatisfied with her job; and Nick reveals a damning secret about his strange marriage. Inevitably, some of these subplots aren’t fully developed.

The good part of having so many plot lines, however, is that the book can show the characters in their full complexity, through a range of emotions, crises, and relationships.

Author Sandra Scofield (a National Book Award finalist for a previous novel) clearly cares about the people in her fictional world, and the reader will, too. All of them—even Nick and Karin—have done the best they can. Sometimes, the author wisely knows, there are no good answers.

In one small example, as Walter observes Alison’s ex-husband, Ben, react to a proposal she offers, “Walter could see something of what Alison must have fallen in love with years ago.” It’s insights like that one that give Little Ships extra richness and depth.