After Moses

Shoe, the oldest of the three Tumakin siblings, has been murdered, leaving a legacy in her will...her five year old son, Moses, has been given to her sister Ida, and her best friend, Emily, has been given to her brother Johnny. Moses' father, Max, comes to town, and he doesn't reveal himself right away, instead, he courts Ida, a dreamy artist who has never left home, never really had a boyfriend unless you count Henry. Soon, the reason why Shoe left Max without telling him that she was pregnant becomes evident...leaving Ida with a hard choice.

One of the main themes in this book is about how you choose to live you life...do you face your fears, live constantly on the edge, almost living in the face of life itself, as Shoe did, or do you forgo the world all together, living in the same sort of half dream state as Ida? In these two sisters Mockler has created two very interesting characters...Shoe is tough. She perseveres, not because she has to, but because it's what makes her feel alive. She does things that seem unwise because she refuses to allow anything to sway her just because she's afraid of it. Complicated, earthy, she deliberates until she sees things clearly then refuses to change her mind. The reason she leaves Max seems pretty simple...he signed her up for a pedicure, and to her that seemed like an insult to the living her feet had taken her through...she went to the bathroom, took a pregnancy test, and decided that, when she found out that it was positive, that she would paint her toenails black. His reaction to this determined whether she would stay or go, because it would mean whether he could allow her any kind of freedom, or if she has to bend her will towards pleasing him.

Ida is much more fae. A painter of wonderful skill, she would rather live as unobtrusively as possible. She often wears a wig or goes out in disguise so that she can pretend to be normal. She sees the magic in the world, and captures it, living a quiet, happy lifestyle that seems to embrace the young boy, continuing to surround him in the sense of wonder that is the main thing the two sisters share...they just pursue it differently. She is sheltered, and naive...when Max comes, she decides that she loves him, and conforms her love to his expectations, even though there is a part of her that questions him. You cant help but feel a lot of empathy for her. Max comes on like prince charming, and his emotional manipulations are small at first, escalating to some so outrageous you think he has to be kidding. This slow courtship is far more menacing that many of the things written in books to scare us...because its all too real feeling, how easy someone can be trapped. Even Shoe, for a time, was lured.

Johnny is the median the two extremes. Like Shoe, he doesn't want to be lead, which is why when the will suggests that he marry Emily, a woman he has long been attracted to, he refuses because he thinks it would give a positive meaning to Shoe's death...the last thing he wants. And like Ida, he'd rather be alone, and he takes many government jobs that require him to do things like track owls in the wilderness for weeks at a time. Emily, too, is a wonderfully distinct voice, a woman who dreams of things that come to pass, Johnny's stubborn refusal to have anything more to do with her thanks to Shoe's will an echo of what Ida is going through, in that both have had dreams of what they want love to be like, visions that may never happen. Emily sees peace and joy, Ida sees comfort, and as she says, someone to explain her to people so that she wont have to.

I know that I tend to natter on about characters sometimes, but in this it's essential, for thats the magic of this piece...all these very different voices, and how they come together to effect, and even infect, each other's lives. The listlessness of Ida's mother, who, crushed by the death of Shoe, now seems to have retreated completely from the world, dreaming of traveling, and seeming to resent Ida for being so content not to, their father, whos escaped into academia, Henry who loves Ida but is incapable of doing the things that might win her, even if he knew what they were. Most of all there is Moses, who has his father's uncanny understanding of the human mind, his mothers restless goodness, his Aunts wonder...his voice is the most compelling of all. Sometimes scary, sometimes bittersweet, it is a read that will truly reach anyone who has tried to defy convention in order to forge a life.

The words after and Moses have two connotations...one, about Max...is he simply after Moses, or does he truly feel something for Ida? And the second, about what life is like After Moses has touched it, for the characters and even for us.