Karena Hallingdahl Jorge has not heard from her twin
brother, Charles, for 20 years. Inseparable as children,
they were driven apart by Charles's bipolar disorder and
the "djinn" as Karena thinks of it, which would take him
over. Medications kept the worst of the disease at bay, but
Charles refused to take them because of the nearly
incapacitating side effects. For awhile Karena could calm
him down during his manic periods, but one day she
couldn't -- a day that would haunt both twins for the rest
of their lives. Charles, who always had a fascination with
storms, became a storm chaser and slipped away from home
and family. Karena remained in Minnesota, where she became
a reporter, living a mostly solitary, quiet life.
Then a phone call from a hospital in Wichita, Kansas,
changes everything. Charles had come in and was treated for
a panic attack. He had given the staff Karena's name and
number as his contact information. Karena gets there as
soon as she can, but Charles has already disappeared.
Feeling that he must still be nearby, Karena discovers a
storm-chasing tour in the area and joins up by pitching a
potential story about storm chasers to the paper back home.
She hopes to either find Charles or someone who knows him.
What she doesn't expect is to develop new friendships with
this diverse group of people or to be so deeply affected by
learning about the complexity and even the beauty of the
destructive forces of nature.
When she finally finds Charles -- or he finds her, she's
not sure which -- he seems healthy, mentally as well as
physically, and she takes him back home with her. But is
the djinn still lurking just below the surface, waiting to
strike when everyone's guard is down?
Being from the Midwest, I have always had a healthy fear of
and respect for tornadoes, so the storm-chasing part of
this book was fascinating to me. However, the story of
Karena and Charles was just as fascinating, as well as
bittersweet and heartbreaking. The storm metaphor resonates
beautifully throughout the book, and the narrative (told in
present tense and in a long flashback) is compelling: What
starts as a "missing person" mystery becomes a sweet
romance and then full-blown family dysfunction, with just
enough humor to keep it from being completely depressing.
While I felt things wrapped up a bit too neatly at the end,
I was enthralled with the journey and found that the
characters stayed in my mind long after I finished the last
page.
Twins are forced to confront a violent secret from
their past in Jenna Blum's first novel since her runaway
bestseller, Those Who Save Us
How
far would you go to protect a sibling-and at what cost to
yourself?
In Those Who Save Us, Jenna
Blum proved herself a master storyteller with brilliant
insight into the spectrum of human emotion. Now, Blum turns
her sights to the most intimate and mysterious of family
relationships-that between twins-in her powerful and
provocative second novel.
As a teenager, Karena
Jorge had always been the one to look out for her twin
brother Charles, who suffers from bipolar disorder. But as
Charles begins to refuse medication and his manic tendencies
worsen, Karena finds herself caught between her loyalty to
her brother and her fear for his life. Always obsessed with
the weather-enraptured by its magical unpredictability that
seemed to mirror his own impulses- Charles starts chasing
storms, and his behavior grows increasingly erratic . . .
until a terrifying storm chase with Karena ends with deadly
consequences, tearing the twins apart and changing both of
their lives forever.
Two decades later, Karena gets
a call from a psychiatric ward in Wichita, Kansas, to come
pick up her brother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for
twenty years. She soon discovers that Charles has lied to
the doctors, taken medication that could make him
dangerously manic, and disappeared again. Having exhausted
every resource to try and track him down, Karena realizes
she has only one last chance of finding him: the storms.
Wherever the tornadoes are, that's where he'll be. Karena
joins a team of professional stormchasers-passionate
adventurers who will transform her life and give her a
chance at love and redemption- and embarks on an odyssey to
find her brother before he reveals the violent secret from
their past and does more damage to himself . . . or to
someone else.
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