Emily Gray Tedrowe

This book gets so much right about the families of service members during deployments. Attitudes, social context, and experiences all line up with things I've seen and heard myself. The author portrays two very different women, with dramatically contrasting perspectives on combat and military service. Their life situations are also very different, and they way they handle the deployments, separation, and injuries sheds light on how military service might affect any of us.

It would be an show more excellent book for discussion, in a group with or without any military connection. It has some R-rated parts - sexual content, alcohol abuse, and upsetting, life-changing war injuries. But this content is primarily for character development and necessary to the plot. It isn't just gratuitous.

I'm grateful not to be able to comment on what it's like to have an injured loved one, but this book gives me insight for those women who do. The only thing that didn't ring true for me is the depiction of smart phones in 2005-2007. I remember that your average military spouse in that time period did not have a smart phone. It's a detail that bugged me, though I suppose it doesn't substantially change the character's situations. show less

★★★★★
Talk about living a double life. On one hand, Becky Farwell is a small town comptroller. She was pretty young when she started handling the financial responsibilities and management of her father’s small agricultural implements business, but she has always had a strong sense for numbers (though not the means to nurture that skill) and she’s kept her and her father afloat longer than expected. Now she’s worked her way up from mere bookkeeping in town hall to handling the show more entire town’s finances. It was all too easy. Fudge some receipts and invoices. Open accounts that no one bothered to verify the validity of. Take responsibility for projects others were all too willing to not tackle themselves, and there it was for her to take advantage. One small discrepancy started it all.. one double payment everyone overlooked gave her a few hundred dollars to finance a new addiction that eventually ballooned out of control.

On the other hand, she is Reba Farwell, extravagant art collector who seems to have limitless funds to participate in the unpredictable business of buying and selling art. She has a whirlwind lifestyle as Reba, and it isn’t easy or inexpensive to maintain her facade. Traveling often, wearing designer clothing, doing just about whatever it takes to get a foot in and getting hold of all (a collection must be complete, and it’s the ultimate thrill to track down and finally amass them all) the pieces she’s after.

Becky dreamt of something grander than what her small town has to offer, and she finds that as Reba in the fascinating world of art, not just the pieces and the mediums but also the value of art. It’s something she has to keep almost completely separate from her “real” life. Not even her closest friend has any idea of what she’s involved with. Becky had ambition that superseded what she knew and what was within her reach in her small town. She discovered an extravagance of such grand scale that was, until her newfound, illegitimate source of income, completely out of her reach. Unfortunately, she was never satisfied despite how much she acquired. Becky wound up depriving her town to satisfy her own selfish desires. She justified her actions and absolved herself of responsibility by re-paying when she could and still granting her city some festivities (if not keeping more important promises to certain departments and making all the necessary repairs). She was truly enthralled with the art, spending hours visiting, studying, researching.. she learned this world with even greater intensity than she might have any other that truly captivated her, in every detail and aspect.

You gotta love those small town checks and balances, huh? It seems completely incomprehensible nowadays with so many people needed to get anything done, especially in government, that one person would be able to manipulate a system so extensively. Maybe it was the small town trust. Maybe it was the complexity of the accounts.. Becky got away with something and it eventually got out of hand. A few hundred dollars turned into millions, and a seemingly innocent (though totally illegible) “borrowing” changed the art world. Becky was smart, though, with at least one contingency plan in place when her machinations were found out. It’s just amazing how far some people will go to protect themselves and how morals are suspended sometimes.

Told in sequence of Becky’s life from when she was a teenager to when she is caught for her mis-deeds, this was a quick read that shows how easily one can get caught up in something completely wrong even without any solid reason or resources to pursue such an extravagant venture. I know this story had the requisite “this is a work of fiction” disclaimer, but I still found myself wondering is this based on a true story? To me, I don’t know if it would have been worth it. I don’t know if there’s anything I’m so passionate about to risk as much as Becky did. Also, I was hoping for more drama with Becky flipping pieces for huge returns. I was hoping she’d be able to do more to re-pay her town (maybe that would have made her actions more palatable. Though embezzlement is always wrong, maybe if she had been able to return more than she borrowed..) rather than just deprive her town. Still though, this woman’s personality is fascinating. Her aptitude for math endeared her to me (because before calculus I thought I was good at math too. Ha!), and despite her recklessness and unethical behavior, I can see how she became enthralled with this new lifestyle and world.

Please note: I received an ARC of this book for free as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Thank you to and everyone who made that possible.

expected publication September 2020 / Custom House / 352 pages show less

If you were stuck in a dead-end town, but knew, from teenagehood, that you had what it took to get far, to succeed, even to make it big -- how would you do it? You have no resources to rely on, no way to get separate yourself from your family, your surroundings, and your very dull existence, and yet you push and push at the edges of your world, hoping that something would happen to propel you into a life of excitement and meaning.

This is Becky Farwell's plight. The answer to her dilemma, is show more unfortunately to take a downward spiral into embezzlement. How that plays out is the plot of the novel.

I sympathized with Becky's drive, and her talents, but without feeling deeply for the character, enough to care about what happens to her too greatly. The book seems like a science experiment, and thus almost feels like a novel of the naturalistic kind - take a girl of this type, put her in this situation, and let's see what happens.

Warning: this book is not a thriller, despite the cover, the nod to Highsmith, or the blurbs. It does however, propel the reader, insofar as I felt myself torn, at times, between sympathy for Becky and her innate abilities, and desire to see her get what she deserves. show less

Becky Farwell is City Comptroller in a little Illinois town down on luck. Reba Farwell is an art collector at the top of her game. Except that Reba and Becky are the same person, with Reba financing her lifestyle by skimming millions from Becky’s town accounts.

Tedrowe’s given us, in spite of the reference to The Talented Mr Ripley, not a sociopathic antihero, but an art-obsessed Midwest woman trying desperately to be sophisticated and worldly-wise. Advertised as a thriller, it’s not. show more Instead, it’s a story of a slow slide deeper and deeper into a hole from which she can’t escape, and how that slide takes everyone around her along for the ride. show less