Tangles by Kay Smith-Blum; Uncovering Environmental Destruction and Familial Disruption
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Kay Smith-Blum’s novel, Tangles, tells two separate stories and links them with the theme of something pleasant and beautiful torn apart by greed and gain. One story focuses on the changing environment and the other is that of lovers separated and unable to connect.
Along with the two plots, the book has two narrators separated by almost twenty years. The first is in the 1940’s and features Mary Boone, a secretary. She is trying to survive an abusive marriage during WWII. She works at the new power plant in Hanford, Oregon which is preparing new weapons against the Axis Powers. People around her start getting sick so she investigates the origins of the illnesses despite objections from her employers, the U.S. government, and her husband, Matt who is the plant spokesperson.
The second narrator is Luke Hinson, a young scientist in the early ‘60’s. His studies are halted when he is diagnosed with a highly suspicious form of thyroid cancer. This diagnosis leads him to his own research into the environment. As Mary and Luke continue their investigations, they find the same solution: the Hanford Nuclear Reservation tainted the environment for twenty years and is slowly killing the environment including its plants, animals, and people. Besides their concerns about the local environment, Mary and Luke share more personal connections. They were once neighbors and despite their huge age gap, the two share a mutual attraction that evolves into friendship and eventually romance with heavy complications.
The duel stories and narrators could have made the book confusing but actually works well. I would argue that it works even better than if we only had one narrator and one time span. In alternating Mary's story with Luke’s we see both the beginning and the end of this story. We see how greedy industrialists first poisoned the environment and then the results of long term illnesses years later. We also see how Mary and Luke’s relationship evolved from being casual acquaintances to Mary eventually becoming the one that got away for Luke. The two narrative halves work together to make the book a complete whole picture of a decaying environment and rocky but meaningful relationship.
This book connects the stories about the environmental investigation and Luke and Mary’s romance in ways that make them interchangeable. They are separate threads that, as the title suggests, are tangled together, affecting each other and the people around them. Neither story could exist without the other, just like neither narrator could finish their story without each other.
Both the natural setting and Luke and Mary’s relationship start out beautiful and become tainted by outside forces. The Oregon setting is filled with trees, woodland, animals, and small towns. Enough progress for people to raise families and find work but not enough to overwhelm and spoil the nature around them, at first. The plant begins the way most industries do, with promises of the future with more jobs and a chance to fight the US’s enemies which were the Axis during WWII then the Soviets during the Cold War. In a community that has plenty of natural resources but is just getting through the Great Depression and facing a war where many men are called up to serve and civilians work in government jobs this offer is tempting. But like any offer that’s too good to be true, they don’t stop to think of the consequences.
The citizens don’t think of what nuclear waste would do to the waters around them, how it would get into the food supply and inside birds, animals, and people. They don’t think about the health risks and illnesses that will shorten life spans or prematurely end lives or that future generations will be affected for years, even decades afterwards. They don’t think that the community that they once held dear and thought would benefit from this plant would break apart because of early deaths, separation, and people moving away from a place that is not only unhealthy but is filled with too many haunting memories.
It’s not entirely the fault of the citizens for not knowing.They are not told of the consequences. The officials in their usual drive to maintain plausible deniability and keep everything under wraps hide the truth from the residents. Oh that polluted lake? Oh that’s natural. People showing symptoms of cancer? Well have they checked their family history? It certainly has nothing to do with what they eat and drink.
The officials make sure that the worst news doesn’t get out and they aren’t above threatening doctors to give different diagnoses, changing statistics, threats, coercion, or murder to make everyone believe that everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about. Beating the United State’s enemies is the most important factor and anything else is secondary. The fact that there won’t be any workers at this plant, because they are either ill, dying, or moved on because of the scarcity of resources never occurs to them. The environment and people’s health are destroyed for others’ gains.
The environment and health aren’t the only things that are destroyed. The bond between Mary and Luke builds and falls apart by outside forces. They relate to each other despite having a tremendous age gap because they are both lonely and suffering. Mary is in an abusive marriage and her parents are dead or dying. Luke’s father has died and he has a loving but sometimes distant relationship with his mother. They both reach turning points in their lives where they have to make serious decisions about their future. At first their bond is simply a friendship between two people that are in similar circumstances and can ask and offer advice based on their personal experiences.
Now there are many that may question their evolving romance because of their age gap and in many ways, they would be justified in doing so. Their relationship can be seen as grooming and certainly crosses many boundaries. It’s not an easy decision for either character and to their credit both Mary and Luke are concerned about the ramifications and consequences of such a union. It’s not a relationship of passion and unbridled sexuality. It’s more of one of two lost souls that were hurting and at their most vulnerable and most emotionally naked and honest, they came together. It happened and they can’t go back and change it. The only thing that they can do is accept the consequences and live with the results.
Just like with the nature surrounding them, outside forces disrupt any future plans that Luke and Mary have. They are separated in the worst way imagined and the truth is concealed for years. It takes a long time, over a decade of loss and regret before any type of reconciliation or reclamation is made between them. When it finally does happen, there is a restoration of balance but also a wistful longing of what might have been if they had acted sooner and did not hide the truth from each other.
Perhaps in a strange way just like the Plant officials were keeping the locals ignorant in their goals of fighting foreign enemies and keeping the US safe, Mary and Luke were keeping each other ignorant in the goal of fighting their own enemies and keeping each other safe. In both plots and both narrations, withholding secrets in the name of safety and security ended up becoming the cruelest action of all.
