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In 1814, Declan Benjamin Benedict Collins emigrated from Ireland to the United States to do a woodworker's job. He had a small inheritance from his mother and married well in America. Eventually, he owned his own lumber and finishing companies and became a millionaire. He used part of his new-found wealth to build a home in Chicken Corners, New York, located in the Catskill mountains area, and which was known as "Collins House". Future generations enjoyed the prosperity that was guaranteed by Ben's legacy. As time passed, however, some bad financial situations were made, and the family's wealth was greatly diminished. By the 1920s, his grandson, Martin Collins, found himself facing debts he could not easily pay. And by 1938, the future of Collins House was threatened. In a misguided effort to save the home, Martin's grandsons, Robert and Ted, join forces with the local deputy sheriff, a man by the name of Potter Washington. They target a home that is being used as a kind of retreat for a large group of immigrant Jews and send them a warning by firing a series of rifle shots into the home. They are careful to aim high enough so that no people will be injured. The terrified visitors to the home leave the premises, and when the sheriff arrives, he finds a dead body‹but the body is of a local realtor who is not Jewish and who was killed by someone in the house at the time of the incident. What the narrative boils down to from that point on is a story of greed and intolerance. Marjorie was involved in some shady doings in an attempt to obtain valuable real estate at extremely low prices. She and her associates used some very underhanded tactics to obtain property. Many of the locals were not accepting of anyone that didn't look like them or attend a Christian church. That kind of small-minded thinking never pays off in the long run and is represented by a legend by the name of Tom Quick who was an obsessed Indian killer in the 1800s and whose identity is passed from generation to generation. The community of Chicken Corners is inhabited by people who are proud of their family lineage, tracing their ancestors back to the 17th century. The reputations of their forefathers impact their lives to this day. For example, nobody trusts a "Tuttle", but it is highly desirable to be a member of the Washington clan. Hayes attempts to weave the long history of these families into the story, but unfortunately, the end result is to make the book extremely confusing to the reader. As he narrates the main tale, he brings in events from earlier generations. That means that first of all, he has to explain the person from the past's relationship to today, which results in endless discussions of lineage and who was whose grandfather or second cousin removed. Thankfully, he incorporated a family tree into the book, to which I referred many times, but most of these ancestral discussions lost me. Secondly, the narrative sequence was fractured by this approach, bouncing from current events to things that occurred hundreds of years earlier and back again, over to some different event where the same thing would happen, resulting in a very non-linear flow to the book. The mystery element of the book was weak at best, and the perpetrator(s) were not the least surprising. I did enjoy the characterization, particularly of Martin Collins and Sarah, a young girl who is in hiding near Potter, Robert and Ted when they are shooting at the house. In addition, the details about life in the 1930s were interesting to read about. I'm afraid that I didn't find this book to be terribly satisfying.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, October 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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