Secrets of Eden

by Christopher A. Bohjalian

  Heather also understood what it was like to see your mom bullied by your dad and be totally powerless to stop it. Sometimes we talked about all the fights we had witnessed. It seemed like her dad would say the same sorts of things as mine and her mom would sometimes hide out in the same ridiculous world of denial. Who knows? Maybe wife beaters really are one-trick ponies. They’re bullies, but about as creative as the bullies you hear about all the time these days who are my age.

  And, of course, Heather was famous. Not famous to me, at least not at first. But soon I figured out that she was very well known to a lot of adults. Ginny, for instance, thought she was totally amazing. And there were at least fifteen videos of her that I found on YouTube. She had been on lots of talk shows and seemed right at home on those comfy couches with the beautiful hostesses. And I loved reading what people said about her books at the online bookstores. Some readers thought she was brilliant, and some thought she was in serious need of medication. Anyway, I would be lying if I said that her celebrity didn’t appeal to me. It did. I thought it was very, very cool.

  But I kept reminding myself that there’s more to life than being on talk shows and having lots of clips of yourself on YouTube. There’s more to life than selling a boatload of books.

  And even after reading both of her books—and I read them carefully—I still didn’t believe there were angels. I’d seen my mom’s bruises, and there was no way I could reconcile those marks with angel wings.

  Sometimes I’d wonder if she and Stephen would ever get back together. I didn’t see it happening, but Tina did. When we talked about it, she said I was like that old Aerosmith song “Jaded.” She was wrong (and she was wrong about the song, too, because, I think it’s more about a girl who is spoiled than a girl who is totally cynical), but I understood what she was getting at. She thought Stephen and Heather would be a good pair because they would, like, balance each other out. Maybe. But it would mean that Heather would have to get over the idea that Stephen had killed my dad, and for a million reasons that’s never going to happen. And Stephen? I don’t know. But I think he’s built to live alone.

  Anyway, in the end I remained most loyal to my mom when it came to that whole weird Stephen thing. Even if by any standard my mom wasn’t as hip as Heather Laurent, she was still the woman who had raised me and read to me and, until Dad killed her, was going to be there for me no matter what.

  WHEN I WENT to the parsonage that Sunday night, Stephen told me to go back to Tina’s house right away and he would deal with the nightmare in my living room. He told me not to tell anyone anything, not even Tina. Later, of course, I did tell Tina. I told her a ton. Not everything. But almost everything. Stephen offered to drive me to Tina’s, but I told him that I had driven to my house and then to his in the Cousinos’ wagon. Aren’t you fifteen? he asked. I said yeah, but then he must have realized that underage driving was the least of my problems that night and sort of shrugged. I think he was in shock, too. In all fairness, when I went from my house to Stephen’s I’d figured that we would go to the police or call for help or do the sorts of things that I had seen on TV. He seemed like the right person, because even though I hadn’t been real good about Youth Group over the last year and a half, he was a minister and I knew he liked me. And I knew he had liked my mom. Now, I’m not sure I would have gone to him if I’d known he would actually go to my house and, as he put it, clean things up. I mean, I thought the two of us were just going to, like, call 911. It was horrible enough for me to see my mom dead that way. I really didn’t want Stephen, who may have loved her for a while, to have to see her that way, too.

  The thing is, I had only gone home after the concert to get my laptop. Tina and I wanted to be online at the same time, and that meant that we needed two computers. We wanted to be on Facebook, and we wanted to buy new songs for our iPods, and there were concert videos on YouTube we wanted to find, and so I said I would go get my laptop. It would take ten minutes. And Tina didn’t even offer to drive. She didn’t need to, because I was just going like a mile to my house. She just tossed me her keys from the bottom of her purse.

  Anyway, after I saw Stephen, I did what he said. I went back to Tina’s.

  The plan, as much as there was one, was that he was going to make it look like my dad had killed himself. He reminded me that my dad had just killed my mom. And that my dad was a horrible man. Stephen didn’t expect that anyone would think he’d murdered my dad. I don’t think it had crossed either of our minds that that would happen. It was supposed to look just like a suicide. Whenever I saw him later that autumn, I told him I was worried he was going to go to jail. Each time he reminded me of something important: There was never going to be any evidence that he’d killed my dad. They might believe that he did it, but they could never prove it. He assured me that looking out for me now was the very least he could do for my mom. I think that was a big reason why he was still hanging around Bennington for a while. He wanted to be there for me till this whole mess blew over.

  And doing something for my mom seemed to matter to him like crazy. Whenever we spoke that fall, he was like this uncle or godfather who felt this huge responsibility to my mom. I mean, he was already into Heather (and then broken up with Heather), so it wasn’t like he was pining for a lost love. But he did feel this burden that he was a part of the reason my mom was dead.

  He was already living down in Bennington when I told him I thought the police were starting to think I was involved. He chuckled a little bit and said he didn’t think that was likely: He said he was the big suspect and to just keep reading the newspapers. But I told him I was worried because of some of the things they had been asking me, and that’s when he told me to go ahead and incriminate him. He said why not? They already thought he’d done it, but his attorney had assured him that they would never be able to prove it. So, he said, throw a little gas on the fire. He said he would, too. I was supposed to call Heather, but before I did, she showed up out of the blue one afternoon at my school, and I was like a windup toy. I just let it all out, just as Stephen had suggested, and I saw right away that he was absolutely correct. She gave me her cell-phone number, and a little later I did call her and made absolutely sure that she—that everyone—was positive that Stephen had killed my dad.

  But he was also right that they were never able to charge him with murder.

  Of course, from that point on I also had to steer clear of Stephen. As I said, he was the last person I should have been talking to. After all, the more I talked to him, the more someone might have figured out that we were—and here is one of those great TV terms from the cop shows I watch all the time now—co-conspirators. If I was seen with Stephen, suspect numero uno in my dad’s death, they might have begun to believe that I knew a lot more than I was letting on. Eventually they might even have begun to think that I was the one who had pulled the trigger.

  I thought it was really ironic that we read The Brothers Karamazov in an AP English course I was taking that autumn. Suddenly patricide was everywhere. One day I felt so guilty I couldn’t get out of bed, and Tina reminded me of what my dad had done to my mom. No one, she said, should have to see her mom the way I had seen mine that night in July. But the thing was, at first I simply thought she was passed out, too. I mean, the place just reeked of beer. I thought she and my dad were both just sleeping. But then I saw the marks on Mom’s neck, and I knew what had happened. (I find it interesting that I can no longer remember her face when I found her. Really. I have a feeling from what I’ve read on the Internet about death by strangulation that at some point in my life I’m going to recall her eyes, and it won’t be pretty—either the image that will come to me in the night or my reaction. I don’t see her eyes when I think back, but something tells me they were open. Anyway, for now at least, I’m spared knowing for sure if my dad actually hit her in the face or punched her in the nose before he killed her.) And that’s when I went upstairs and decided I would go get the handgun instead of my laptop.


  I never did go back for the laptop, and so it would be among the stuff that Ginny and Stephen brought me the next day. When I left, Lula was pacing nervously back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. It was Stephen who had let her out when he went back, and—to be totally honest—I’m pretty sure he kicked her out because she really was lapping up the blood that was all over the place. I don’t remember his exact words, and clearly he regretted like crazy what he’d started to tell me. He was trying to explain why Lula had wound up outside.

  Someday, I know, he’ll regret that whole, horrible night. He should have just been a pastor and called the police, but I guess he was afraid I’d go to prison. (One time he said the fact that my dad had been such a psycho might reduce the sentence, but I shouldn’t kid myself: This would be no juvie offense.) If he’d been a dad himself, that’s what he would have done, and maybe ten years from now we’d both be better off.

  Anyway, if I live to a very old age, I know I’ll have tons and tons of regrets. I mean that. But somehow I don’t think putting a bullet into my dad’s head is ever going to be one of them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Once again I am indebted to a great many early readers, none of whom is a literal angel but all of whom were profoundly helpful. Among them? There is the Reverend David Wood, one of my closest friends and the pastor of the church where I have worshipped most of my adult life. There is Lauren Bowerman, an assistant attorney general with the State of Vermont. This is the third time that Lauren has graciously told me what is authentic in one of my manuscripts and what is completely ridiculous.

  In addition, Dr. Steven Shapiro, the chief medical examiner for the State of Vermont, helped me understand what would have happened to the fictional George and Alice Hayward after they died. Siri Rooney, the victim advocate for the Lamoille County state’s attorney’s office, shared with me the horrors that a battered woman such as Alice was likely to endure, as well as the resources that were available to her. Meanwhile Bridget Butler taught me about birds. Among the books that were especially valuable was Dr. Louis Cataldie’s memoir of his years as the chief coroner of Baton Rouge, Coroner’s Journal: Forensics and the Art of Stalking Death.

  Other readers included a variety of friends and agents, many of whom are both, including Stephen Kiernan, Jane Gelfman, and Dean Schramm; my editor of fifteen years and one of my very closest friends, Shaye Areheart; my lovely bride of a quarter century now, Victoria Blewer; and, for the first time, my deeply thoughtful teenage daughter, Grace Experience.

  I am grateful as well to Cathy Gleason at Gelfman Schneider; to Arlynn Greenbaum at Authors Unlimited; and to the whole enthusiastic team at the Crown Publishing Group: Andy Augusto, Patty Berg, Cindy Berman, Sarah Breivogel, Whitney Cookman, Jill Flaxman, Jenny Frost, Kate Kennedy, Christine Kopprasch, Jacqui Lebow, Matthew Martin, Donna Passannante, Philip Patrick, Annsley Rosner, Jay Sones, Katie Wainwright, Kira Walton, and Campbell Wharton. It really does take a village—or a skyscraper floor.

  I thank you all for your wisdom, your counsel, and your honesty.

  SECRETS OF EDEN

  Chris Bohjalian

  Reading Group Guide

  by Kira Walton

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  In order to provide reading groups with the most informed and thought-provoking questions possible, it is necessary to reveal important aspects of the plot of this book—as well as the ending.

  If you have not finished reading Secrets of Eden, we respectfully suggest that you may want to wait before reviewing this guide.

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  “There,” says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, feels his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, an author of wildly successful inspirational books about … angels.

  Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her parents’ murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice’s and George’s daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen—who flees the pulpit to be with Heather and see if there is anything to be salvaged from the spiritual wreckage around him.

  But then the state’s attorney begins to suspect that Alice’s husband may not have killed himself … and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew.

  This reader’s guide is intended as a starting point for your discussion of the novel.

  1. Re-read the quotes that open the book. One is from a leading voice of Enlightenment rationalism, the other from the Bible. Samuel Johnson speaks about loss and sorrow; the quote from Genesis is about the bonds of marriage. What did you think of this unique pairing when you began reading? Now that you’ve finished Secrets of Eden, how do these quotes help shape your understanding of the story?

  2. What did you think of the title before you began reading? The phrase “secrets of Eden” appears when Heather Laurent and Reverend Drew are together in New York: “He pulled me against him and said simply, ‘There were no secrets in Eden’”. What do you think Reverend Drew means by that? What are the secrets in the biblical Eden? Where is the “Eden” in Secrets of Eden? Is it a place? A state of mind? What are the secrets in the story, and who is keeping them? What is gained or lost when these secrets are revealed?

  3. Chris Bohjalian is known for writing novels with an evocative sense of place: New England, especially small-town Vermont. How does the setting of Secrets of Eden impact the characters? How is it vital to the story? Could these events have taken place in another landscape, another social context? Why or why not?

  PART I: STEPHEN DREW

  4. The novel begins from Reverend Stephen Drew’s perspective. How would you describe his voice as a narrator? Is he sympathetic? Reliable? What is his state of mind? In the first few pages of the first chapter, what does Reverend Drew reveal about himself? About Alice Hayward’s life and death? What does he not reveal? Did you immediately trust his point of view? Why or why not? What words would you use to describe him? Do you think he’d use the same words to describe himself?

  5. When he recalls Alice Hayward’s baptism, Reverend Drew remembers the word “there” in a poignant way, comparing the last word Alice spoke to him with Christ’s last words on the cross. Why do you think this simple word—“there”—is given such weighty importance? How is it related to what Reverend Drew calls “the seeds of my estrangement from my calling”?

  6. Reverend Drew says of his calling to the church: “All I can tell you is I believe I was sent”. He then delves into a grisly description of the Crucifixion, recalling the first time he studied it in high school. With what we know about Reverend Drew up to this point, how did this revelation help you understand him? Were you drawn in or repulsed by his fixation?

  7. How does Reverend Drew explain his spiritual breakdown? Was there one moment when he lost his faith (Alice’s baptism, her death) or was it the result of a series of events? What kind of response did you have to his breakdown? One of empathy? Curiosity? Suspicion?

  PART II: CATHERINE BENINCASA

  8. Before we hear from Catherine in her own voice, we see her through Reverend Drew’s eyes. What is your first impression of her from his perspective? Does that impression change once you see things from her point of view? What words would you use to describe Catherine?

  9. Catherine says of Reverend Drew, “the guy had ice in his veins … [a] serial-killer vibe”. How does this compare with how he portrays himself? Do you think Catherine sees Reverend Drew clearly based on what she knows? Is she jumping to conclusions, or making use of her intuition and the hard truths she’s learned throughout her grueling years on the job?

  10. At one point, Catherine says, “I know the difference between mourning and grief”. What do you think she means by this? Do you agree that there’s a difference? How would you describe the reactions, so
far, of Reverend Drew, Heather, and Katie to the terrible events they’re faced with—as mourning or grief?

  PART III: HEATHER LAURENT

  11. By the time we get to the section narrated by Heather, we’ve seen her from both Reverend Drew’s and Catherine Benincasa’s points of view, and we’ve read excerpts from her books. How would you describe her? Do you agree with Drew that she’s “unflappably serene … an individual whose competence was manifest and whose sincerity was phosphorescent”, or do you agree with pathologist David Dennison’s take on her: “Angel of death. I’m telling you: That woman is as stable as a three-legged chair”?

  12. Heather’s section begins with her description of her first encounter with an angel: she’s a young woman, lost in the depths of depression, and intends to commit suicide. How would you interpret this moment? What does it reveal about how she deals with the deaths of her parents? About how she sees the world?

  13. Reverend Drew and Catherine Benincasa both provide graphic descriptions of crimes and crime scenes—the Haywards’ and others—but Heather’s memories of the violence between her parents is particularly grim. How do you react to reading these passages?

  PART IV: KATIE HAYWARD

  14. Ending the novel in Katie Hayward’s voice is a provocative choice. What do you think of it? You’ve now seen her from the points of view of Reverend Drew, Catherine, and Heather—how would you describe her? Does she seem like a typical teenager? To borrow Catherine’s distinction, is Katie grieving or in mourning?

  15. At one point during a conversation with Katie, Reverend Drew says, “it was one good thing to come out of that awful Sunday night: We were all striving to be better people. To be kind. To be gentler with one another”. Is this true in the case of the people in this novel? Can good come out of such violence, such painful loss? How does each of the four main characters respond? How does the town in general respond?