2021 Debut Review: WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG by Julie Carrick Dalton
Waiting for the Night Song has been very well received by readers and reviewers alike, and it’s easy to understand its wide appeal. Carrick Dalton is a strong writer. Her lush descriptions of New England’s forests are so vivid you will smell pine needles and taste lake water as you turn the pages. The story also covers a range of meaningful subject matter:
Climate change
The plight of migrant workers and undocumented residents
Childhood friendship
Truth and consequence
I was particularly interested in climate change and environmental issues. Carrick Dalton is an organic farmer with first-hand knowledge of the earth and climate. Her prose is packed with detailed observation and poetic beauty found in both the usual and unexpected places. There is a harrowing moment when the protagonist, Cadie, hits a black bear with her car as it flees from a fire. Cadie sits beside the bear so that it won’t die alone. She describes drivers on the opposite side of the median, “unaware that a bear was dying and that they had all collectively killed it. Timbering forests, cutting paths for power lines, polluting the air. Corporations burying science. All creating the conditions for a fire that would drive this bear into moving traffic.” It was a sad and moving scene where I felt closest to Cadie and the author. Carrick Dalton is honest with her readers; the best writers are.
A running theme throughout the novel is consequence. This pertains to a murder and its coverup, a secret that festers inside Cadie for more than twenty-five years—and also the human impact on ecosystems. Even the novel’s title Waiting for the Night Song refers to Cadie straining to hear the nightly birdcall of a Bicknell’s Thrush, as she did in her childhood. However, the thrush’s numbers have declined due to habitat loss with encroaching agriculture in the Caribbean where it winters, and warmer temperatures in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Both Cadie, and the author, are brave in bringing the climate change to light. That it was done in such an engaging way is a benefit to us all.
Cadie loves the granite native to New Hampshire’s mountains. She even collects granite rocks for a cairn piled on the floor of her apartment. I went looking for a large rock to place the book, but one that also had some kind of foliage surrounding it.