The Girl From Charnelle (2006)

In the early-'60s Texas of K.L. Cook's resonant first novel, The Girl from Charnelle, people don't talk much about the whys of things: why a woman suddenly walks out on her husband and five children or why her 16-year-old daughter, too wounded to grieve, enters into a clandestine affair with a married friend of the family. Soon, though, the reader recognizes the recurrent themes of motherhood and madness, the power of shame, and abandonment as a compulsive search for self. Cook leaves many unanswered questions, particularly about the mother's psychological state. But in disturbing scenes like one in which a mama dog kills her puppies, he adroitly reveals an average family's devastating potential for violence.