While I’m not inclined to forgive a parent who kills their child on impulse, I admired the complex character Ruskovich creates in Jenny. I found Jenny’s plot the most puzzling and challenging to understand.

For much of “Idaho,” she behaves like an empty shell, unable to grant herself any happiness after her crime. Interestingly, we never learn why Jenny swung the ax that ended her child’s life when she had been a loving, affectionate mother just earlier that day. I saw Anne’s quest as a function of our inherent morbid curiosity but also a service to Wade, who no longer comprehends who he is except in bits. The way the novel’s characters understand their pasts defines their identities in the present, though they might try to suppress unpleasant aspects of their pasts. Things remain real in our minds if we believe they are. We witness Anne construct whole scenes out of neglected artifacts or details, such as Jenny’s old drawing book or a doll shoe in a tree stump. Ruskovich seems to say that our individual truths are malleable, a combination of reality and what we choose to believe. The driving forces behind the events of “Idaho” are the power of memory and the ways we shape our memories, even if we can’t control the events that create them.

Other characters make appearances in brief pieces.Įven by the end of the novel, I still was not a fan of Ruskovich’s chapters, but I realized it reflected the nature of our memories - fragmented, often random and flawed. Along with Anne’s search for closure as she tries to understand her husband, Wade’s, character, “Idaho” follows Jenny’s life in prison and path to self-forgiveness, Wade’s descent into dementia and the sisterly relationship between the lost girls from years earlier. “Idaho” jumps from contemporary times to the sequence of events leading to Jenny’s unexplained crime. The anthology-style chapters also annoyed me at first, since the vignettes created a choppy flow. Since Ruskovich enjoys writing poetic passages, I grew to appreciate her careful word choice since she imbues every detail and action with significance, making the characters’ ultimate fate more tragic or rewarding. I’m usually impatient when it comes to flowery prose and long, complex sentences with double meanings. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have picked up a book like “Idaho,” but I grabbed it on impulse one late night at the library.

Years later, second wife, Anne, of the girls’ father tries to decipher the events of that fateful day. At first, I found the premise of the book incredibly pretentious: a mother, Jenny, suddenly kills one of her daughters for no apparent reason while the other girl runs away. It turned out the be one of the most substantive novels I’ve ever read. Over winter break, I read “Idaho” by Emily Ruskovich, a book with a deceptively simple title.

Idaho emily ruskovich summary