“The Midnight Dress” by
Karen Foxlee is an amazing story – a bread and butter story that leaves you
full, completely satisfied; the taste of salty butter still lingering on your
lips and feeling a little sad that you ate all of it. The book is woven around Rose, a lonely high
school girl, who wanders around the country with her alcoholic father. They come to a small sea side town, which she
calls “Paradise” somewhat sarcastically and truthfully at the same time.
Rose is sarcastic; she views herself as dark and above most
things without being snobby, yet the view she has of herself is not the view
other people or the reader have of her. “Paradise”
has an annual tradition that all of the girls ride in a float in beautiful
dresses and the most beautiful and deserving is crowned queen. Rose meets Pearl and a friendship is
born. Rose tries to push her away and
hide behind her “dark” heart, Pearl doesn’t allow it. Her goodness, her bubbliness, and her nonstop
talk overcomes Rose’s standoffishness. She convinces Rose that she must
participate in the parade and have a dress made.
Each chapter is named after a type of stich, threading the
characters together throughout the entire book.
Rose meets Edie who has the reputation of being the town witch. Edie agrees to make a dress for Rose if she helps
sew it. The author remarkably weaves a
story of intrigue: Edie who is witch to a town and not witch to the reader,
Rose who has a ruby heart but sees it as the darkest black, and Pearl who is
beautiful to everyone but feels trapped by a small town.A simple story of friendship? Not at all. Enter a detective, a murder case, a mysterious mountain, and that lonely feeling that creates a sense of loss, a sense of lost in even the most seemingly well put together people and you have the bread, the foundation of a wonderful story.
As for the butter, the lingering saltiness, the beautiful language threaded and woven into each character’s thoughts, it's creative and poetic, yet to the point. Rose thinks of how Edie must feel about the mountain she has come to love:
“How she must miss it now. How she must long for the singing creeks and the secrets of the trees. Was that why she collected and kept so much from the place? All the leaves rotting in boxes and white cedar flowers pressed behind paper. All the powdery remains of firewheel blossoms and climbing lilies, like dying stars, withering” ( p. 288).
On one hand there is beautiful imagery of sing creeks, cedar flowers, and firewheel blossoms, and on the other there is the opposite of ugly rotting, remains, and dying. The author does an excellent job throughout the book of pulling the reading in these two opposite dichotomies for the setting, characters, and overall story.
This is a must read.
