Prince of Lost Places

Rating:
Summary: You're better off reading the book than a review first!
Review: One of those books where giving a summary would be giving the plot away, so I'll be deliberately vague about the story. I'll just state what would be obvious to the reader - it's about a woman who runs away from home with her son, her estranged relationship with her husband, and a detective (hired by the husband) who has a past.

In its essence, I see the story as how a person's love can make one unwilling to let go -- the husband's love for his wife; the woman's love for her son. And perhaps part of the story illustrates a person's selfishness -- the main characters' willingness to go to extremes, to give up everything, just to hang on to their lost dreams.

It's a fairly short book to read. The beginning may seem a bit tedious (just a little) but it gets interesting towards the end, where everything falls into place & the reader would probably go "Ah, I see!".

The author makes it obvious that the woman has some sort of mental illness. But as the story progresses, one might start wondering if it's the husband who's ill and not the woman. The story is spiced up with the detective falling for the woman.

Rating:
Summary: Another great novel from kathy Hepinstall
Review: Prince of Lost Places by Kathy Hepinstall

Kathy Hepinstall's third novel, PRINCE OF LOST PLACES is a story of a young mother who takes her six-year old son away from his father and hides out in a cave in the deserts of south Texas, hoping to protect him from the dangers of the world. After a friend of her son's is tragically killed at school, Martha feels that the only way to protect Duncan from the same fate is to take him away from everything he knows, and hide out for the rest of their lives.

The novel opens with a conversation between the detective hired to search for Martha and Duncan, and David Warden, Martha's husband and Duncan's father. The reader learns that Martha and Duncan have just disappeared, and David is rightfully distraught. His main concern is that Martha is not well, is "delicate" and is "crazy".

The next scene takes us to a burning car, as Martha and her son stand by and watch. They are in the middle of a Texas desert, near the Mexican border, and are far away from their home in Ohio, where David is waiting for their return. She feels exhilarated as she watches the car go up in flames, and happy that her son trusts her. No one at home trusts her, she thinks, and they all think she is insane. She knows they are wrong. She feels that taking her son away from the others is the right thing to do. So, she and Duncan are now on their way in search of a cave in south Texas that she has learned about from a customer of hers at her flower shop. With only his information to go on, she and Duncan continue their trek towards the Mexican border.

Martha creates a new life for herself and Duncan inside this magical cave. Duncan misses his father but Martha soothes him by telling him that his daddy would meet them soon. Duncan soon stops asking about him, as life on the Rio Grande becomes a routine of exploring, fishing, swimming, and daily reading lessons. With enough rations for several months, Martha's only worries is that Duncan would learn that his mother had lied to him, and that David would eventually find them living in the cave.

However, instead of David finding them, the detective finds them first, and he lies to Martha, giving his name as Andrew, which happens to be her father's name, and as he gets to know her, he starts to fall in love with her. He stalls his return to civilization and David, and soon he too becomes a part of their every day lives.

THE PRINCE OF LOST PLACES was another enjoyable read by Kathy Hepinstall. Under 200 pages, it took me only a day to finish. As with her other books, I found that her style of writing comes close to being poetic in her use of words and style of exposition. The story line, however, was not as strong as with her other two books, HOUSE OF GENTLE MEN and ABSENCE OF NECTAR, but I still found this book worth reading, especially with the surprise ending. I would not recommend this to a first time reader of Hepinstall's works, but definitely read it after trying one of her other two novels first. Kathy Hepinstall is one of the more gifted writers I have read in the past few years, and am looking forward to finding out what she has in store for the reader in the near future.