Shelter

Starred review from August 29, 1994
A meticulous writer of luminous prose whose books appear at too rare intervals, Phillips here limns a dark, richly imagined story of evil confronting innocence in an Edenic atmosphere. Set in the West Virginia Appalachians in 1963, the narrative builds toward the fateful encounter of a group of polar opposites: four Girl Guide campers come into violent collision with a former convict, Carmody; his young son, Buddy, whom he cruelly abuses; and Parson, a Bible-obsessed, half-demented loner who considers himself God's instrument and is Carmody's nemesis. While it's obvious that Carmody and Parson are society's outcasts, the four girls also carry dark secrets. Alma Swenson has been forced to become an accomplice to her mother's affair with Nickel Campbell, the father of Alma's best friend, Delia; now Delia is fatherless after Nickel's suicide. Meanwhile, Alma's older sister, Lenny is burdened by repressed memories of her father's molestation, and her best friend, Cap Briarly, has been abandoned by her cold mother. Phillips reveals the emotional wellsprings of their behavior slowly, in a narrative permeated with sexual tension and a rising sense of menace. As she demonstrated in Machine Dreams , she is sensitive to children's thoughts and impressions; vulnerable, resourceful Buddy steals the reader's heart. She also gets girls' banter just right, but her real achievement is in conveying Parson's inchoate religious fervor and Carmody's vicious, drunken outbursts. Her prose is highly charged yet tightly controlled, palpable with intense visual imagery. The novel has a few lapses: some scenes are too mystic and opaque; some symbols (a snake, in particular) are over-emphasized. But the denouement, in which the main characters come together in a dramatic, almost cinematic confrontation, reconfirms Phillips as a masterly writer. Author tour.

May 15, 1994
Major rights sales and a 16-city author tour suggest that Houghton is serious about Phillips's new novel, a Southern gothic tale set in the summer of 1963 at a girl's guide camp in West Virginia.

June 1, 1994
Plot here takes a backseat to style, a self-conscious style made purposely baroque simply to showcase the author's facility with language. The scene is a girls' summer camp in West Virginia; the time, 1963. Two sisters, surrounded by the ripeness of the forest and field, and surrounded by men of various ages and reasons for being present in or near the campsite, are forced to face their burgeoning sexuality. The girls' increased knowledge of the world of sex actually leads to the termination of a life, and the quick need to shed their girlhood and face maturity rushes at them full force. Phillips' elaborate investigations of her characters' thoughts impede her novel's flow, but her sustained, sinister atmosphere will keep readers interested. She is a considerable talent, and people who thrive on "literary" fiction will thrive on this. ((Reviewed June 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)

July 31, 1995
Phillips's second novel is a dark rite-of-passage story of children confronting violence in Appalachia.

August 1, 1994
In her newest work, acclaimed novelist Phillips (Machine Dreams, 1984) presents a dark, violent, and yet familiar world, using as her setting a forested mountain summer camp for girls in West Virginia during the early 1960s. Classic coming-of-age stirrings in camper sisters Lenny and Alma mingle with the frightening family secrets of Buddy, a young boy who hangs around the camp. Meanwhile, a young man named Parsons who knew Buddy's stepfather in prison, hides in an abandoned shack in the forest and watches the man he believes is the devil. The brutality the stepfather inflicts on Buddy and his "Mam," the camp cook, sets the stage for the terrifying drama that propels this novel. Powerful and riveting, this is highly recommended for most collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/94.]-Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.