The Art of Crash Landing

Decarlo’s excellent debut chronicles what happens when 30-year-old Mattie Wallace finds herself unearthing family secrets in her mother’s hometown. Mattie remembers her deceased mother, Genie, as a broken alcoholic who dated a string of losers—save for Mattie’s erstwhile stepfather, Queeg, with whom she still has a relationship. After being identified as the only surviving heir to her estranged grandmother’s house, Mattie spends all her money and ventures to the small town of Gandy, Okla. Her deadbeat boyfriend, Nick, who keeps calling, doesn’t know that Mattie is pregnant with his child. DeCarlo manages to make her heroine endearing despite her many flaws: she creates clever private jokes with the reader and slips in the occasional heartbreaking memory between brash shows of pushiness. Luke, a kindly paralegal, allows Mattie to stay at her grandmother’s property while the legal kinks get worked out, and Mattie takes a job at the library. People in town recall Genie as a vibrant blonde who had a music scholarship—an image Mattie has trouble reconciling with the bitter redhead who raised her. With a little nosing around, Mattie manages to get to the bottom of why her mother suddenly left town and became who she was. DeCarlo’s writing bristles with Mattie’s vibrant personality. The book’s final pages feel somewhat rushed and condensed after the long, leisurely story that unfolds earlier, but this doesn’t detract from what is otherwise a triumphant first novel. (Sept.)