Skeletons

June 24, 2002
Marilee Donne is the academic loser of an overachieving family who is accidentally responsible for a young stalker's death while house-sitting for her grandfather in Eugene, Ore. The novel follows her attempt—with the help of her best friend, Casey, and a smalltown reporter, Bruno—to unravel the stalker's motivation, as we discover that he was not after Marilee but evidence of a Klan lynching tucked away in her grandfather's house. When they learn that the lynching involved an up-and-coming presidential candidate, their trip takes them to New Orleans in search of the evidence they need to seal the case against him. Wilhelm tackles difficult material in her latest novel, not altogether successfully. Her dated hyper-consciousness of race is jarring: Casey, Marilee's brainy African-American friend, is described as a sort of unlikely prodigy, and Marilee constantly worries that their friendship will be misinterpreted—"I could imagine what his report had been: lesbian lovers, a violent black woman beating up on her little blond partner." Wilhelm equates the Crescent City with the racist Deep South of yore, and the dire warnings strangers give Casey not to be seen eating with Marilee (or "someone might decide to run a truck into that old heap of yours") are—in a modern town that's more than half African-American—ludicrous. Likewise, statements such as "although desegregation was the law of the land, segregation ruled" take powerful liberty with the actual city. The mystery at the heart of the novel is well crafted, but the gee-whiz narration and implausible context sink this well-intentioned whodunit.