The Town of Friendswood

The town in Friendswood by Rene Steinke bears the same name as the title of the book. The story begins after a bad hurricane sweeps through a coastal community in Texas. The main character Lee drives to a Methodist church in town and has a conversation with a man holding a bible, He reads her the scripture, "'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God.' Romans thirteen" (4). This shows that the town is religious and conservative, which is also later reinforced by the character Hal who "believed he needed to pray more" (13) to find success at his job and be a better man.

Banes Field is where Lee used to live in Friendswood. It's now a dangerous and restricted area with a secret Taft Properties and the city don't want anyone to find out about. But Lee trespasses onto the area and discovers the secret: "a giant, filthy, gray vinyl box. The top of it was charred with a bright pink and brown stain, and a crack jiggered its way down the middle, where a copper liquid leaked out in a thin, jagged stream" (11). So there is also a terrible secret in Friendswood that may have harmed its citizens.

Before her big discovery, Lee bought a shovel at the local hardware store, and she met up with her boss, Doc, while there. He's glad to see her unharmed after the terrible storm. "When [Lee's lover] left her, Doc had offered her the job at the office and became her protector, though he had his own wife and son" (5). This shows that the community in Friendswood is tight-knit because they have strong relationships with each other.

There are also other examples of the tightness of the community of Friendswood. Taft Properties owns the Banes Field area, and the owner of Taft Properties, Avery Taft, played football with Hal, who is a real estate agent. Taft wants to build homes in the Banes Field area, so "Taft Properties was [Hal's] best hope--he wanted an exclusive listing for one entire inventory" (14). It's interesting to see how the antagonist in Lee's case is Hal's friend and only hope for success. In addition, Willa's mother used to be friends with Lee in high school, and although they aren't anymore, that same sense of tight-knit community is conveyed by the fact that they once were.

Friendswood reminds me a lot of my own hometown. I come from a conservative and tight-knight little community that has its fair share of secrets and tragedies, too. That fact makes this book all the more captivating to me.

Characters

After reading the first 30 pages of Friendswood by Rene Steinke, I've come across quite a few interesting main characters. So far, I've been introduced to Lee, Hal, and Willa, all of whom live in the tight-knit town of Friendswood, Texas. Steinke makes it very clear who the main characters are, as each chapter title holds the name of the character that part of the story will focus on.

Lee lives alone and often goes back to the remnants of her old house where her family had once lived happily together. She has an ulterior motive for entering the restricted area around her old home, but she is a sentimental character. As she stands where her kitchen used to be, she "felt the old upstairs ghosted above her, the bed where she'd slept with Jack, and Jess's bedroom, with its window overlooking the street" (9). She also has faith in uncovering some secret kept by the old oil refinery near her house that will somehow "redeem her" (11), so Lee wants compensation for something she lost in her past.

Hal sells residential properties, but he hasn't had much success recently. He blames it on the fact that "now people just recklessly relied on the Internet rather than, God forbid, pay a live person" (13). He thinks that if he prays more and strengthens his tie to God, he'll be rewarded with success. Hal also had an affair with a woman named Dawn while he was with his wife Darlene, whom he still loves. He ended both the affair and his drinking problem, and he's trying to become a better person. "He had to stop himself, because too much thinking ... took him to places that deviled him. To pray was more rational ... it put God back in charge" (16). So Hal is also a religious man who knows he's done wrong in the past but wants to be better in the future.

Willa is a teenage girl who sees visions no one else can see, and she doesn't understand them. "This extra sight was a weird new ability like double-jointedness, come to her late in the summer, but she didn't know if it was real" (20). At first, I thought Willa's ability was to see ghosts, but that doesn't seem to be the case. She sees images of both people and objects that seem to be random, and she is secretive about this ability because "she hadn't told anyone, not even [her best friend]" (20).

There's still a lot of mystery around these characters in Friendswood, but I'm intrigued. I want to know what happens next!

I'm about to start reading the novel Friendswood by Rene Steinke.

I hope it's good!