BETWEEN THE SHEETS is another tour de force from fabulous author Molly O'Keefe. O'Keefe is one of my favorite authors, who consistently delivers novels with traumatized characters who have pathological coping mechanisms keeping them from happiness. O'Keefe tosses two such people in a small town with repeated exposure to one other, and we watch their emotional walls slowly, painfully crumble.

Shelby Monroe is the only daughter of a now-dead charlatan preacher and a mother with worsening Alzheimer's. Shelby's father emotionally abused Shelby and her mother for years.

"As a child, in the face of her father's violent disapproval, she'd created this identity, this cold distance between herself and other people's opinions, in an act of defiant self-protection. Dad couldn't hurt her if she pretended not to care. Pretended she didn't need affection or approval. It had been an abused and scared kid's way of coping. And as a woman, she didn't even know how to change it."

Shelby is barely keeping her head above water, trying to be the main caregiver for her mother as her dementia worsens.

Ty has moved back to Bishop to provide his newly discovered 11 year old son with a fresh start. Casey escaped from foster care and tracked down Ty, who didn't realize he had a son. Casey is full of anger and fear and self-loathing, and is getting in trouble in school. Ty "felt like an intruder with everyone, unable to get comfortable with himself, much less anyone else" as a dad and a man.

Shelby originally uses Ty as a way to punish herself while blowing off emotional steam, with raunchy near-faceless sex. But Ty sees glimpses of the real Shelby behind the facade that she presents to the world.

"[h]e wondered if maybe they shouldn't just leave things at filthy sex on the floor. But their lives were already brushing up against each other in a dozen places and, well, he didn't want to leave it at filthy sex on the floor. He liked her. Liked her awkwardness and her seriousness. He liked what she hid behind them. Suddenly, he wanted to see her smile."

Together, they painfully lurch forward in resolving their issues and reaching toward happiness.

"But you mean more to me than the sex we've had, Shelby. I want more of your fierce heart and your secret smiles. Your loyalty and decency. I want to help you shoulder some of the load you've got because you've helped shoulder some of mine. I want to find out what you think and how you feel. I want to put you on the back of my bike and go for a ride. Lie down in a bed with you. I want to argue about what to watch on tv and... I want everything. Everything you have to give to a person, I want to be the man who gets it." "I don't know how." "Me neither."

This book tore me up and made me root so hard for Ty and Shelby. I felt like cheering on my sofa every time they made a step forward, and I cried when they slid back into their personal despairs. O'Keefe made me really feel their ultimate triumph, cementing her favored status on my bookshelves.