Will Byrnes's Reviews > Sleeping Giants

The oldest monsters are unnamed. Unnamed monsters, Dennis learned before he even knew his own name, were the worst kind of all. When you gave a monster a name, you had it in hand. There, that one was anger. Rage. Sexual abuse. Dennis learned the names of all these before he was four, as items the child psychiatrists crossed off on their checklists. They were looking for answers. They were looking for monsters to blame.
But the worst monster of all? That one was as cold as sleet. He climbed up the hill at night and played with your feet. He washed the tears from your face and cooed like a mother before slashing your heart to ribbons. The worst monster, Dennis knew, was like Satan from the Bible some parents read to you. He came wearing disguises, and no one knew his real name. He pretended to be a lot of things, and the worst thing he pretended to be was love.

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…all the boys here were throwaways. It was like being in a giant wastebasket filled with dirty tissues. You knew you were lost.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. - Aphorism, origin unknown


Renee Denfeld - image from her site

Rene Denfeld, author of several novels (see links in EXTRA STUFF) dealing with criminal justice, and in particular the abuse of children, has returned to familiar territory, with a story about a boy ill-treated by the child-protection system, the torturous methods used to control him and others, and the impedimenta of foster care secrecy laws, designed to protect, but often used to cover up.

The idea for the scene depicted on the cover came during a trip to an Oregon beach for a mental health day when she spotted a little boy charging into the water - from the Spokesman (print) interview

In Chapter One, we are introduced to nine-year-old Dennis Owen as he races toward the ocean, a frothy, treacherous body of water bordering Oregon, a place not conducive to family outings.

Mist struck his face with force, and the wind tore at the institutional shirt he wore…Behind him, signs littered the dunes by the beach road: WARNING: TREACHEROUS CURRENTS. WARNING: HIGH TIDE. WARNING: SHARP DROP-OFFS AND SNEAKER WAVES.

Dennis plunges into this perilous Pacific, pursued by a man.

The novel looks back at the boy’s meager life and at that of the man who had been chasing him. The backstory will eventually explain all. As part of that, we see Dennis from age four. Already having been bounced from foster home to foster home, he is relegated to Brightwood, a place with a new director, Martha King, fresh off directing another group home in Arizona. Think Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Delores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. Killing you with kindness.

She has ways to be mean where everyone around her stands up and claps. That’s the worst kind of meanness, son. The kind where everyone says it’s for your own good.

Martha’s ability to be everywhere and see everything is too extreme to be believed, but suspend that disbelief, as her awfulness provides a strong counter to Dennis’s strength and character and the kindness of others. Renfeld does give Martha a backstory that explains, while not forgiving, her dark behavior. It seems likely that Martha King was named for Martha Welch, author of a book on Holding Time.

“Holding time” is a draconian, punitive method of treatment that sounds nicer than it is. It’s basically a physical and psychological torture that’s designed to break children down to the point of psychological collapse by physically restraining them. Some children have actually suffocated to death by this treatment. The idea is that children will somehow “start fresh” afterward, like rebooting a computer, which of course is not how humans work. If you destroy someone psychologically, they’re not reborn. They’re destroyed. Holding time has been thoroughly rebuked by scientists, and yet somehow it’s still used. - from the ZED interview

The methodology of the novel is a contemporary investigation twenty years after Dennis disappeared, by his sister. Amanda Dufresne, adopted as a child, now twenty-six, had survived the foster care system much better than had her brother, whose existence she only recently discovered. She works as a keeper to an orphaned polar bear (Molly) at the Oregon Zoo. She is smart and dogged in trying to find out what had happened to her brother. Denfeld brings her real-world skills as an investigator to this tale, yet again, giving Amanda’s quest plausibility. She gets a boost from a retired detective, Larry Palmer, who is still living in Eagle Cove, even though his wife, who had been the one to move them here, had passed. Helping Amanda gives him a sense of restored usefulness, and a daughter figure to nurture and protect. It was important to Denfeld that her prime investigating character not be a detective, but an everyday person in search of the truth. Amanda does take the lead, but Larry helps considerably more than the prototypical police expert who helps the leads in cozy mysteries. This is a world Denfeld knows all too well, both as an abused kid, homeless at fifteen, and as a loving foster and adoptive mom.

The novel features a strong cast of supporting characters, among them employees and other children at Brightwood, residents of Eagle Cove, and the local constable.

She also offers a side-mystery. There is something hinky with the story of how Molly found her way to the zoo. Amanda conducts her solo investigation of that, because of her love for the bear. No Larry involved in that. It is a heart-warming tale, paralleling the human investigation, and will leave you in need of tissues.


The Blythe intaglios were created on the desert floor hundreds if not thousands of years ago by Native people for an unknown reason. - Image from AZcentral

Denfeld is a master of imagery. The story takes Amanda and Larry to Arizona, where they learn of a remarkable (real) local feature.

In the novel, sleeping giants are massive stone age carvings…But the real sleeping giants are the secret, hidden pains, and anger inside us that can come out in misdirected rage. In my experience, when these sleeping giants are awakened with a cause—especially one driven by white supremacy, misogyny, or other biases— a permission slip to commit harm is signed, sealed, and delivered. - from the Crimereads article

They might also be the fierce waves into which Dennis plunges.

Renee Denfeld will break your heart. By page six, I was already feeling a welling up. Thankfully, I am not faced with the sort of sorrow Larry must endure, having retired to a remote, coastal town, and then losing his wife. My spouse is doing quite well, thanks, and is likely to be around long after I am gone, but Denfeld so captures the sadness of loss that it is no trick to summon the feelings, the awful mourning that accompanied the passing of my sisters. It makes me wonder what Larry would do with his pain. She will also bring you to tears of rage at the treatment Dennis experiences at Brightwood, and feel affection for him as human being with no control over his life. She then tugs your heartstrings again as Molly’s story is revealed. There is a core intention in this novel of raising consciousness about the plight of thousands of children in the foster care system, (Renfeld estimates that there are over 20,000 children who have gone missing) and the legal limitations that make it so hard to help, find them, or even know that they are missing

Sleeping Giants is a masterwork by one of our finest novelists. It took her several years to write this one, a longer stretch than is usual for her. It has been worth the wait. For a book that comes in under three hundred pages, it is a giant of a read.

Most crime fiction focuses on the outliers—the outright, obvious sociopaths, usually unexplainably brilliant—or else criminal underworlds, like gangs or drug cartels. This is all interesting stuff. But I think it has the effect of othering violence. It assumes there is a world full of normal people who are blameless, who couldn’t fathom the idea of committing harm even if you suggested it. This creates a false dichotomy, an us vs them that is troubling and honestly, kind of disingenuous.
It’s true, most people don’t go around committing egregious crimes. Not directly, at least. But spend a few hours on a next-door neighbor site and you can see the seething anger that boils into outright discrimination, the rage that leads people to the voter’s ballot to pass even more punitive laws, and elect officials who will do their dirty work for them.These regular, everyday citizens might not be the ones administering the lethal dose, or locking people up, or torturing children, but they are the mass behind the monsters. Collectively, they can become the monster...[but] just as we are capable of everyday evil in the name of good, we are also capable of profound healing, joy, and goodness. - from the Crimereads article

Review posted - 06/7/24

Publication date – 3/26/24


I received an ARE of Sleeping Giants from Harper in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks.




This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!

=============================EXTRA STUFF

The author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages

Profile - from her site

Rene's novels are influenced by her work as a licensed death row investigator. She is the past Chief Investigator for a public defenders and has worked hundreds of cases, including exonerations and helping rape trafficking victims. The survivor of a difficult background, Rene regularly speaks on social justice issues, as well as writing and overcoming trauma.

Previous Denfeld books I have read and reviewed
-----2019 - The Butterfly Girl (Naomi Cottle #2)
-----2017 - The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle #1)
-----2014 - The Enchanted

Interviews
-----The Spokesman-Review - Rene Denfeld hopes to inspire change, reflection with new book ‘Sleeping Giants’ by Emma Epperly
-----The Spokesman-Review - -Northwest Passages Book Club: Author Rene Denfeld, "Sleeping Giants" - by Stephanie Oakes – Video – 47:23
-----ZED – The Zoomer Book Club - Rene Denfeld Reveals the Sad Truth About American Foster Care in ‘Sleeping Giants’ by Rosemary Counter
-----Beyond with Jane Ratcliffe - Addressing Harm, Helping Others, and Embracing Hope: A Conversation With Rene Denfeld - there is a pay wall here

Items of Interest from the author
-----Crimereads - WHEN GOOD PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS: EXPLORING EVERYDAY EVIL IN CRIME FICTION - 3/27/2024
-----Ravishly - Born Again: Rene Denfeld on the Birth of Love - 10/25/2019
-----Washington Post - After a childhood of wishing for a new family, I found my dream in adulthood - 8/30/2017 – on her challenging upbringing
-----NY Times - Four Castaways Make a Family - 8/11/2017

Items of Interest
-----Wiki on Holding Time - Attachment Therapy
-----AZCentral - Blythe Intaglios: The 'sleeping giants' of the desert by Michael Chow and Thomas Hawthorne
-----Wiki on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
-----Harry Potter Wiki on Delores Umbridge