EVERYTHING LOST RETURNS

In 1910, a year of Halley’s Comet, fire breaks out at the Earthshine Soap factory, killing seven women. In 1986, another year of the comet, 40-year-old Nona Dixon, first hired as a 7-year-old to represent Earthshine in its marketing, is acting in a soap opera sponsored by the company. Childless and facing divorce, Nona lives in fear her character will be killed off. When Nona’s closest friend, Halley Tuttle, dies after falling out with her grandmother, Earthshine’s 99-year-old owner, Bertie Tuttle, she leaves Nona an old notebook with a recipe for “Comet Pills” signed by someone named Opal Doucet. Domet’s narrative shifts between Nona and Opal, with Opal plotting her future and Nona trying to figure out who Opal was. In 1910, Opal isn’t sure herself. A pregnant runaway wife and self-proclaimed spiritualist, she’s confused by the voices she hears but believes that her pills make women happy and fertile. Her most important client is sterile Bertie, whose husband wants to sell the company unless she can stop him. But is Bertie trustworthy? Is Opal? In 1986, Earthshine is under siege as various anonymous Jane Does claim the soap causes addictive side effects. Nona begins to distrust the Earthshine world to which she has pledged loyalty. As connections between 1910 and 1986 reveal themselves—sterility, lost love, infidelity, greed, and ambition, to name a few—real mysteries remain unsolvable: What is choice, misdeed, and/or unintended consequence? Can one person’s spirit be called forth to inhabit another’s body? Is laughter the correct reaction when a striking 1910 factory worker shouts “Our bodies, our soap.” Domet’s writing is uneven, sometimes overblown, sometimes murky, but also highly imaginative. Her characters are intriguing if ambiguous.