Love and other crimes on Hot Springs Drive

You mean love doesn’t conquer all?

Sometimes a book will surprise me, like when the writing is much better than I expected. Sometimes the surprise is more like a swindle, like the time I eagerly started a psychological thriller only to discover that it was more of a sad mental health story.

Sometimes you want a diversion but you end up instead with something deeper, something that makes you think. Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter falls somewhere between a surprise and a swindle, and I mean that in the best way possible because bottom line: this book is tremendous. It’s just that going into it, I wasn’t expecting to think so much.

Hot Springs Drive begins from the viewpoint of a house like any other, just a normal house on a normal street. The rest of the novel is all too human, but the intro sets the tone for this powerful story. When you peek inside the window, peer behind the door, you might be sorry you looked.

The novel has a large cast of characters led by Jackie, a self-described bad mom who has four kids, all boys, and no peace and quiet. Food is the only thing in her control until she starts going to a place called Get Skinny with her best friend, the doomed Theresa. Then she turns it around: food is still under her control but now it’s all about deprivation, crunching on ice, and tiny spoonfuls of yogurt kissed with a drop of honey.

Theresa is the good mom with only one daughter. We know she’s doomed because this much is revealed in the inside book flap: Theresa is murdered in her home in an act of extreme violence. So Hot Springs Drive isn’t a typical mystery, but it is, I think, about the ultimate human mystery: people. Why we are the way we are, why we do the things we do. How much choice do we really have?

Hunter’s writing is impressive with moments of WOW. As dark (and darkly funny) as the story is, she also has an eye for human kindness, for things that matter in a family. She previously wrote two novels and two story collections and Hot Springs Drive is a combination of the two, a novel built on chapters with alternating voices and perspectives.

One voice is Cece’s, Theresa’s daughter, who says

It did feel good, every once in a while, to have a family, people who knew you, the rumpled, unadorned you, and loved you no matter what. Sometimes it was like they were each whipping around a skating rink, flying past each other, a waving blur, and sometimes they slowed down at the exact same time and glided together for a while.

When Jackie gets skinny, she gets noticed. And then she strays, embarking on a passionate affair with devastating consequences for everyone in her life. She’s selfish but she’s also acting on behalf of her self, really for the first time ever.

The different voices and perspectives include the adults as well as the children, and the story moves forward in time several years to when the kids are adults themselves. I felt bad for all these people: the hapless husbands, the children caught in the middle, even the murderer, and even Jackie.

There’s an especially tender scene between one of the sons, Samuel, who like his mom was fat first, then painfully thin. He has a breakdown of sorts at work and a co-worker takes him to his home, saying “you should not be alone my friend,” and feeds him, cares for him. It’s a sweet moment of hope.

I went into this novel thinking it might be juicy, and it was, but in the end it was more sobering. If you’re looking for a gritty. dirty and deep novel about love, lust, identity and the banality of motherhood, head over to Hot Springs Drive.