Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Reviewer: Bill Selnes
Home Fires Burn by Anthony Bidulka
(12. – 1255.) Home Fires Burn by Anthony Bidulka – Merry Bell is tentatively reaching out to her father, Samuel. It has been 12 years. She calls him on the landline of her parents. He answers the wall mounted phone. He calls her Joey. She says she is now Merry Bell. He instantly realizes the names as her grandmother’s first name and Bell as the English translation of Dzvonyk, their family surname.
The first call is abrupt. Merry makes more calls. Though short in time, emotion fills every call as Merry deals with her feelings about her parents when she was Joey and told them 12 years earlier “that she was actually a girl and wanted to become one”. They are a powerful series of calls.
Anthony provides a candid and credible portrait of a family relationship for a transgender person coming out. Forgiveness comes hardest in families.
Merry meets her first love, Evan Whatley. Since they finished high school he has become a famous rockstar. While he is startled by her transition they resume easy conversation.
Their relationship is complicated. As a teenager Evan was a gay boy loving another boy, Joey, who did not want to be a boy. Now Evan is a gay man and Joey is Merry, a transgender woman. Anthony addresses their uncertainties. They are friends. Can it be more?
Evan hires Merry. His father, John Whatley, was found dead a year earlier in circumstances all too real for Saskatchewan residents. On a bitter winter night with the temperature at -33C and a wind chill of -42C he is locked out of his car on a country road outside Livingsky and cannot find his keys.
The police conclusion of “death by misadventure” troubles Evan. Merry undertakes to find out what happened that night.
Merry sees her father in a memorable meeting shortly before Christmas. It is organized by Merry’s high school classmate/office neighbour/unexpected friend, Brenda. It was emotional and moving.
The emotions of Christmas seasons past and present are wrenching and compelling.
Orientation and gender affect families at special occasions. Christmas is the most complex time of the year. Merry’s Christmas experience left me almost as drained as Merry.
I noted Anthony’s personal passion for themed Christmas trees made its way into this book with a spectacular 20 foot tree beautifully decorated by Brenda. It is “champagne coloured”, slowly rotating, with “boughs heavy with shiny ornaments of gold, brass and white and at the top the largest star Merry had ever seen, so bright the Three Wise Men would need sunglasses”. That is a Christmas tree!
Merry’s investigation into John Whatley’s death proceeds slowly. Dead ends keep requiring Merry to go deeper and deeper into his lfe.
Merry and her landlord, Gerald Drover, continue to have an unlikely relationship. Anthony caught me totally offguard when Gerald meets Merry at the Mayor’s Boxing Day Breakfast for the citizens of Livingsky for both are wearing Christian Louboutin footwear with signature red soles (Merry in her signature boots and Gerald in “shiny black leather lace-ups).
I regretted that Merry’s sidekick, Brenda’s cross-dressing husband Roger/Stella, did not join the investigation until late in the book. They are such a fascinating sleuthing duo.
By going through the tapes of the crime podcast, The Darkside of Livingsky, which is hosted by Stella, there are a couple of leads for Merry.
It takes Merry and Roger/Stella working together to solve the mystery of John Whatley’s death.
The final chapters flew by.
Anthony’s books have themes that dominate the book. I see the overarching theme in the Merry Bell trilogy as relationships.
I saw Under Sweetgrass Bridge as his best exploration of vulnerability.
In Home Fires Burn the relationships include parent/child, teenage love, teenage rejection, a cross dressed man with a happy marriage and transgender/straight relationships. The mystery has some challenges competing with the exploration of past, present and future relationships.
I found Home Fires Burn most powerful in its exploration of the angst in the relationships of straight parents with gay or transgender children. I was grateful that love triumphed.
****
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