"Never Stop Fighting For What You Believe In"
Reviewed by Susan Dyer
Posted October 19, 2014
Women's Fiction Contemporary
THE FIRELIGHT GIRLS follows the story of five women, who all
have ties
to Camp Firelight, a summer camp for girls of all ages. After
running out of
water and funds, the camp is closing down. Ethel, the camp
director and
manager, decides she needs some help to clean the place up. She
seeks
out the alumni to help and three former campers, Laura, Ruby
and
Shannon come to spend the week with her cleaning and packing.
While
the four of them continue to mourn the loss of their camp,
Ethel is still
mourning the loss of the love of her life, Haddie. Ruby is also
mourning the
loss of fifty years of wasted time that she could have had with
Ethel and
Haddie.
THE FIRELIGHT GIRLS includes three generations of women, one of
which is a young girl who runs away from a bad situation that
her mom
created. She broke into one of the cabins and is trying to live
there and still
get to school. Amber has had a rough life and she is trying to
stay in
school and be as normal as she possibly can. The women discover
her
and take her under their wing.
Laura has raised her kids and now feels as if her marriage is
over. There is
nothing more to bring her and her husband together. They
haven't had sex
in years and when one is in bed before the other, they pretend
to be
asleep. Laura is the only one saying I love you, something her
husband
Steve doesn't say anymore.
Forty-year-old Shannon, spent the summers of her youth as a
happy camp
counselor and is now trying to figure out where her life is
going after
watching her career take a turn for the worse. Shannon is a
teacher and
right before she left for Camp to help Ethel, she has a bit of
a melt down
and may or may not have a job anymore. She isn't really happy
there
anyway, and she is hoping the week of cleaning and packing up
camp will
give her the answers she needs about her life.
THE FIRELIGHT GIRLS is a heartbreaking story, one I fell in
love with
very early on. The story moves between characters as well as
time periods
and life events easily, giving you a rich vision of the women's
lives and their
relationship to the camp. I went to summer camp myself and I
found this a
gentle reminder of a simpler time and the joy that comes from
camp. For
anyone who has gone to summer camp - or wishes they did - this
is a
comforting read.
SUMMARY
The summers you spend at summer camp are indelibly etched
on
your heart. But what happens when the camp you love is
about
to close? Can you ever really say goodbye to the place that
made you who you are? These are the questions that plagues
Ethel, the seventy-year-old former camp director who is
nursing a broken heart after losing the love of her life as
she now faces the impending closure of the camp on Lake
Wenatchee that she called home. It's also a question that inspires change in forty-year-old
Shannon, who spent the summers of her youth as a vibrant,
capable camp counselor and is now directionless after
watching her career implode. And there's Laura, who has
lost
all intimacy with her husband and doesn't know if she can
save what seems to be gone forever. Finally, Ruby, who
betrayed Ethel years ago and hasn't spoken to her since,
hopes this will be her chance to make amends. When the four women learn that a homeless teen has been
hiding at camp, they realize camp is something much more
immediate for all: survival. And so the three generations of women search for a way to
save the place that saved them all, finding in the process
a
way back to themselves and each other in The Firelight
Girls, Kaya McLaren's novel of love and loss, heartbreak
and
healing.
ExcerptETHEL 2012Ethel sat across the small table, eating cornflakes and
talking to Haddie’s urn, which now sat where Haddie’s food
used to. A few months ago, Ethel had found the urn to be a
bit impersonal, and so she had drawn a face on it with a
Sharpie marker and tied several lengths of black yarn to
the lid as a makeshift wig. Recently, she had acquired a
hand-knitted wine bottle cozy that she fashioned into a
stocking cap for the urn. After all, it was beginning to
get cold outside. “Are you ready to go to camp today?” she asked the urn. Adjusting to Haddie’s absence after sixty years had been
unfathomable—so unfathomable, in fact, that Ethel hadn’t
adjusted to it.
There had been several traumatizing moments associated with
the passing of Haddie: the moment Ethel realized what was
happening and that she could lose her, the moment she had
to tear herself away from Haddie’s pleading eyes and tight
grasp to make the phone call Ethel had hoped would save
Haddie’s life, then returning to Haddie’s lifeless body
after the call, knowing she had abandoned her best friend
and companion during her final moments of life. And then
there had been that moment Ethel had picked up Haddie’s urn
from the funeral parlor. “I can do this, I can do this. She’s not in here, she’s not
in here, she’s not in here, she’s not in here…,” Ethel had
quietly whispered to herself as she walked into the funeral
parlor. She had settled the final bill and then was handed
this urn. It was much heavier than she had expected, and
although that caught her off guard, it seemed appropriate
that the weight of her loss should be so great. In the days prior to picking up the urn she had imagined
Haddie in heaven, but after Ethel held what remained of
Haddie in her hands, the physicality of ashes began to seem
more and more real than spirit. It wasn’t instant. As she
walked out of the funeral parlor on that day, she was still
repeating, “This isn’t her, this isn’t her, this isn’t her,
this isn’t her.” Ethel had paused on the sidewalk for a moment and looked at
the world around her, this world that had never understood
the love Haddie and she had shared, this world that had at
times been so unkind. Was she really supposed to plan a
memorial service and invite to it people like Haddie’s
religious family—people who had no idea who Haddie really
was? People who would have called her a sinner and banished
her if they had? A feeling washed over Ethel, something she
hadn’t felt with that intensity since they were young—that
feeling like it was Haddie and she against the world. She
gripped the urn tighter and slipped into the safety of her
car, where she placed the urn gently on the passenger seat. As she drove down the road, she found her hand resting on
the urn as if it were Haddie’s leg, only significantly
colder and harder. Maybe that had been the turning point in
Ethel’s attachment to the urn—that moment that had simply
allowed Ethel the comfort of habit. Now, almost a year later, Ethel chatted at the urn across
the table from her while she ate her cereal and made a list
of things to remember. “Oh yes, good thinking,” she said to
the urn when a new idea popped into her head. She continued
to talk to the urn while she washed her dishes and while
she packed her things, and then she tucked it into her coat
and headed out the back door. Crunchy vine maple leaves littered the brick stairs from
the cabin down to the lake. As Ethel descended the steps,
she dragged her old green army surplus duffel bag behind
her. Everything she could possibly need fit into it. A
couple of times, it picked up speed, so that she had to
step aside and let it go. After it hit a tree and stopped,
Ethel resumed dragging it down to the dock. On her hands
and knees, she rolled the duffel bag into the canoe and set
Haddie’s urn comfortably on top. Then Ethel made four more
trips back up for jugs of water. Ethel loved this charming cabin Haddie and she had shared
since they had retired. It was just two miles down the
south shore from Camp Firelight, which had been their home
for over forty years. Although significantly quieter, it
had still felt like home. Almost every morning they had
kayaked past camp as if they were its guardians, which was
exactly how they had felt. On this day, since she had such a large load, Ethel took
the canoe instead of her kayak. She sat on the dock and
gently eased herself onto the seat. It was the first time
she could remember taking the canoe out all by herself. It
felt so empty without Haddie in it. As Ethel paddled down the south shore, she wondered if
anyone would show up at all. She’d always thought camp was
important to many people, but maybe she was wrong. After
all, had it really been that important, it wouldn’t be
going defunct. Maybe she would be all by herself out there
this week. Sometimes she liked having camp all to herself,
but under these circumstances it would be like having a
funeral for someone she cherished and having no one else
come. She looked at the urn. Yes, it would be just like
that. There was comfort in being in the presence of others
who knew what was lost. She couldn’t bear to go through
another loss without that. When she paddled around a little point, she saw her
neighbor, Walt, floating in a cove in his rowboat. It was
hard to miss his red plaid wool coat and matching cap with
earflaps. He was around her age and had lost his wife about
a year before she had lost Haddie, and something about just
seeing him was a comfort to Ethel—perhaps that he was proof
a person could somehow endure this heartbreak, or perhaps
that he was proof she wasn’t as alone as she felt most of
the time. She saw him fishing on every calm day like this
one. On most days the lake was windy chop and on those days
he often didn’t bother, but these calm days were not to be
taken for granted. He missed not a one. She paddled right up to him. “Good morning, Walt. Any
luck?” He held up two perch. “Dinner is served.” “Well done, sir,” she replied. “You look like you and Haddie are going somewhere.” He was
the only person who knew about Ethel’s attachment to the
urn. The first time he saw it, she knew it needed
explanation and, since he had recently gone through the
same thing, she knew he would understand rather than judge
her. “We’re off to close up camp. They’re shutting it down for
good.” “No,” Walt said. “I know. I can’t believe it either.” “It seems like just yesterday I was twelve and getting
pelted by the mud balls you Firelight Girls threw at us
whenever we’d sneak out of the Boy Scouts camp and try to
raid.” Ethel smiled as she remembered making mud balls. For a moment, both of them were silent. Then he asked, “How
long will you be there?” “A week.”
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