cover image In the Name of Sarah Pogford

In the Name of Sarah Pogford

Jon Jordan, . . Permanent, $26 (159pp) ISBN 978-1-57962-166-7

A former grade school teacher haunted by a terrible past narrates this thin, predictable debut novel. An aging, conservative dresser with a deep paranoid streak, Elda Graff lives with her ghoulish husband, Mack, and a sweet little girl named Sarah Pogford, doing her best to avoid intimate contact with others. Elda's one regular commitment is volunteer work at a local children's theater, where she meets Joanne Davies, a young high school English teacher who requests Elda as a long-term substitute during her maternity leave. Elda's return to teaching draws her back into her own past, and she discovers that Tucker Harding, a student with violent tendencies, might have some ghosts of his own. Elda is a classic unreliable narrator, but she's also remarkably transparent; the reader knows her secret as well as Tucker's long before she admits them, which all but flattens the dramatic art. There are a few moments of suspense, but the novel is marred by stock characterizations, didactic moralizing and a too-facile treatment of mental illness. (July)