Biblio File book review: Orinda novelist -- Beware of phone calls on the Fourth 

From The Chico Enterprise Record, 7/1/04

By DAN BARNETT 

Imagine one ordinary Fourth of July in the Bay Area suburb of Monte Veda. Dan and Avery Tacconi are joined by their best friends Lus and Valerie and their young son, Toms, for dinner and conversation. Avery has just about everything one could want in a well-organized life: good neighbors, a handsome, outgoing, and successful husband and plans for a family together.

But, at 28, Avery has not been able to conceive. Her husband is not the problem. So far, it's been seven rounds of IUI, or intrauterine insemination, and her dreams of a baby -- how she envies her friends -- have been put on hold.

Her story is told by Orinda novelist Jessica Barksdale Inclán in "One Small Thing" ($12.95 in paperback from New American Library), which is available at local bookstores as well as online at www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com/main.htm. Inclán lives with her husband and two sons, teaches writing and women's literature at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, and is working on more novels, including a series of paranormal romances.

Avery has run up against something she cannot control. "Whatever she'd wanted before -- a degree, a husband, a house, a job -- had been hers to get. If she needed to ace a test, she studied all night; if she wanted Dan, she smiled and then ignored him until he came over and sat by her at Peet's Coffee, buying her a double latte, walking her home to her dorm room." 

She's quit her job so she and Dan can be together when her body timing is right.

"Whatever it was," Inclán tells us, "Avery did what she needed to do to get things to happen, to be right. To be perfect. And this wasn't perfect. Not in the least." 

The author takes us into the heads of both Avery and Dan. For him, Avery was "the one he had met at Peet's six years ago, her hair the color of the summer foothills by his childhood Sacramento home. ... She was ... full of energy, electricity. ... The one who would burn away the past, leaving nothing but a space of time to be forgotten and then rewritten."

But life is rarely so simple. Darting inside for a moment to get a tray, Dan notices the message machine. One of the messages is from a social worker named Midori Nolan. It is urgent, she says and soon the story is revealed. An old girlfriend of Dan's, Randi Gold, with whom Dan had spent some eight years, had died. She left nothing behind except a will and a 10-year-old son, Daniel. Dan's son, it turns out.

Trouble is, Dan has told Avery nothing of this relationship. Dan and Randi were heavily into drugs, and Dan stole from his parents to support his habit.

Dan's family has been silent about all this, hardly speaking with their son, while Dan's brother Jared, a community college history instructor, privately urged Dan to remember his past and do something about it.

Avery is devastated; her neat little world crumbles and she plunges back into work and is wooed by a charming foreigner. Dan and Jared meet Daniel --something of a problem child -- and his foster parents, and make plans for moving Daniel home with Dan. "One Small Thing" deals with infertility, selfishness and the emotional havoc wreaked by one small phone call. (A conversation guide is included at the end for book groups to use.) 

A letter to me from the author, whom I've not met, notes that a quote from my review of an earlier novel, "When You Go Away," is featured on the first page.

Dan and Avery are easy to identify with, and I can't help but think the author is having a bit of fun with me after that earlier review suggested the main character was hard to get to know.

Think about it: the main character in "One Small Thing" is named Dan; his son is Daniel. And Daniel's foster parents? Mr. and Mrs. Barnett, if you will! "Mr. Barnett wasn't home, but Dan could see evidence of him everywhere -- in some project on the table, metal parts and bolts and some kind of glue."

"Dan" and "Barnett" within four words of each other. 

Yes, I think I can identify with these characters pretty well. 

Happy Fourth!

Avery Tacconi, the 28-year-old heroine of Inclán's latest (One Small Thing), wants everything to be perfect, but life keeps getting in the way of her plans in this endearing story. At first, fertility problems loom large--Avery abandoned a promising career to put more effort into conceiving--but soon enough her husband's secret past takes center stage. It turns out before Dan straightened up and went to business school, he was a drug addict who got his then-girlfriend, Randi, pregnant without knowing it. Surprise! On a lovely summer night in the California suburb of Monte Veda, Dan gets a phone call informing him that Randi has died and left behind a 10-year-old boy, Daniel, who's probably his son. Avery--who's emotionally scarred from a childhood marred by her father's death and her mother's subsequent depression--shows little compassion for what she perceives as a sordid situation. She returns to work, where she's tempted by a love affair. Avery's bad behavior, especially when contrasted with Dan's superb adaptation to fatherhood, is an unexpected plot point that works. Daniel's arrival in Dan and Avery's home offers Inclan the chance to paint touching and realistic scenes that lift her story above standard soap opera fare. Predictably, Avery comes around in the end, but it's an intriguing--and at times maddening--journey getting her there. —Publisher's Weekly, April 19, 2004.

Avery Tacconi had everything she could want except a baby. For the past two years she and Dan have been trying but with not much success. It was getting to the point where it was an obsession with Avery. When a phone call came for Dan it was the beginning of what would change both their lives. That call opened up Dan's past, one that Avery didn't know about.

In his wilder days Dan had lived with a woman and fathered a child he never knew about. Ten years later when the child's mother had died she had stated she wanted Dan to have his son. Anger and sorrow were the twisted sword that seemed to haunt Avery after that message. She had doubts about what other pieces of Dan's past she didn't know. Was this the man she was married to or someone she didn't know?

What of this boy who was coming to live with them? He was Dan's son but not hers. She had hoped and prayed for her own child to love and hold not some child of an old girlfriend.

A touching story of a woman who must come to an understanding that she must open her heart to all that comes in life and find that forgiveness in both ways. Life is not always the perfect one we have planned for ourselves. There are rocks and hills along the way but once we get over them the rewards are so much more than we had ever planned.

I think this one is worth keeping! —Louise Riveiro-Mitchell, author of Autumn Sky.

BOOKMARKS: BARBARA SLONE
"One Small Thing by Jessica Barksdale Inclán" (NAL Accent, $12.95, 256 pages)

Orinda author Jessica Inclan never writes about "small things." Each of her three previous novels has expounded on the large emotional issues that can tear human relationships apart.

The families she explores teeter on the brink of dissolution and despair. Whether the crisis is teenage pregnancy, cancer or divorce, Inclán's characters respond with the confusion and dejection common to most human beings.

Avery Tacconi, the heroine of Inclán's latest novel, is not one to accept depression. Her entire life, since her father's death when she was only 14, has been directed toward achieving her goals. The perfect life she outlined for herself as a teenager has come to pass. The outstanding student, the college graduate, the successful career woman, the loving husband and the beautiful home in the good neighborhood -- she has it all.

All except "one small thing": the baby she has dreamed of and planned for does not materialize, despite the efforts of her and her husband, Dan. Though the couple does constant fertility testing, tries various medical procedures and decides that Avery should give up her job to stay home, she cannot conceive.

Her close friendship with the next door neighbors, Luis and Valerie, only intensifies her desire for a child as she fondles their baby, Tomas, her godchild. However, as she looks forward to the neighborhood's annual Fourth of July barbecue, Avery still has hope that her dream will be realized.

That hope is shattered by three phone calls from a social worker in Stanislaus County. To both Avery and Dan's dismay, they learn that his old high school sweetheart Randi has died and left a 10-year-old son. The son, Randi said in her will, was fathered by Dan.

Not only is Avery appalled to hear of the boy's existence, she is also furious to learn that there are years of her husband's life that Dan has never revealed to her -- years of drinking, stealing money for drugs and living with Randi in a relationship his family disapproved of. Where was the upright, hard-working Dan she thought she knew and loved, the one she wanted to father her children?

As it becomes apparent that Dan must bring the young Daniel into their home, Avery abandons her fantasy world for the real one. Her unconceived child's nursery will become Daniel's bedroom. His anxieties and fears following the death of his drug-ridden mother will fill their lives.

She can't find it in her heart to forgive Dan for his secrecy about his past life or to open up to the needs of the little boy whose presence will always remind her of Randi, the other woman in her husband's life.

Where Inclan excels as an author is in tapping into each character's inner thoughts and feelings. Initially the reader sympathizes with Avery and her disappointment, but she is not a lovable character in many ways. Rigid, judgmental, self-centered, she lacks understanding for the weaknesses of others. She is a control freak, who learns the hard way that she can't control everyone's life, not even her own. Her attempt to escape back into her old job only leads her to more unhappiness and a near disaster of an affair.

Dan has made big mistakes in his life, alienating his parents in the process. He had the strength to acknowledge the necessity of changing his life and heading in another direction, but he didn't have the courage to admit to his wife, Avery, the past he wished to forget. Now his mistakes require further clarification. His relationship with the wife he loves deeply will be tested, as he tries to make contact with a young boy who needs stability, not rejection.

Although Avery, Dan and Daniel remain the triangular focus of the story, Inclan has produced a strong supporting cast of characters: Dan's estranged parents, Marian and Bill, and his loyal brother Jared; Avery's sister Loren and her family and the mother Isabel, whose spell of depression Avery endured as a child; neighbors Luis, Valerie and Tomas -- even the ghost of Randi intrudes.

Always lurking in the background is the memory of the small one Avery longs for, the baby she never had.

Inclan reveals in a recent interview included with this novel that pregnancy, childbirth and raising children are important themes for her. She also states that a big theme in "One Small Thing" is how we can't hide from the past.

From New American Library come a number of soft cover novels that include Jessica Barksdale Inclán’s One Small Thing ($12.95) that tells the story of 28-year-old Avery Tacconi and her dream of having a child. She has the career of her dreams and a husband she adores, a beautiful suburban home, but she wants one small thing, a baby. Despite efforts to conceive, she is confronted with the discovery that her husband is the father of a 10-year-old son he never knew about. Now that the mother is deceased, he is the rightful guardian. How she deals with this is a heart-warming story of how she opens herself to all of life’s possibilities. —Bookviews.com, Alan Caruba, April 2004.

Read Reviews of Jessica's Fifth Novel, "Walking with Her Daughter"

Read Reviews of Jessica's Fourth Novel, "One Small Thing"

Read Reviews of Jessica's Third Novel, "When You Go Away"

Read Reviews of Jessica's Second Novel, "The Matter of Grace"

Read Reviews of Jessica's First Novel, "Her Daughter's Eyes"