THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ROAM by Daniel Wallace – Review

The Kings and Queens of Roam by Daniel Wallace
Genre: Adult Fiction
Publisher: Touchstone (A Division of Simon & Schuster)
Release date: May 7 2013
Source: Finished hardcover from publicist
Pages:  277

In a word: A strikingly original folktale, full of secrets and lies, some very complicated relationships, and a just a splash of magic realism.

So Helen remained and discovered in her sister’s absence what love and the loss of it is; she discovered both at the exact same time. It’s not just a feeling; it’s a real thing inside of you made of a paper-thin glass, and when it breaks the shards move through your blood and cut you to pieces.

I never got to read Big Fish, Wallace’s first book, but I did see the movie, which I absolutely adored. When I was offered the chance to review The Kings and Queens of Roam, I jumped at the chance, since I knew Wallace had an excellent reputation as a writer of magic realism. I was not disappointed. Roam (yes, the title is too long so I’m shortening it!) was a dream of a story, a perfectly paced gem with a unique hook that feels just like the start to a fairytale: an ugly girl named Helen must care for her beautiful but blind sister Rachel after their parents are killed in a freak car accident. The twist to this tale? Helen has been lying to Rachel since they were young children. She has convinced her sister that in fact Rachel is ugly and Helen is the beautiful one. This premise sets the stage for a quirky story full of lies, secrets, and revenge, a story that takes so many unexpected turns that you will not be able to guess where Wallace is going next.

Helen and Rachel live in the dying town of Roam, home to a once prosperous silk factory. Rachel has spent most of her life believing Helen’s horrible stories of the dangers of Roam—which include flesh-eating birds that live in the surrounding forests, and the Hanging Tree, where townspeople with “some kind of physical problem” are hanged each year—and the impossibility of ever having a life anywhere else. But one day Rachel decides that, blind or not, she is going to strike out on her own and walk to Arcadia, the next town over, to find a mythic river that supposedly cures all ills. Rachel wants to see if the river can cure her blindness, but she’s mostly leaving to prove to Helen that she can indeed survive on her own. But the events that follow Rachel’s brave act are like a precarious house of cards: one simple decision may lead to the destruction of everything the sisters have come to believe in.

Wallace constructs his story by alternating narratives from the past and present, a style that I love. For in order to understand why the characters do the things they do, you first have to understand Roam’s history and the histories of the people who settled the town. The author tells a wild tale of Helen’s and Rachel’s great-grandfather Elijah McCallister, who kidnapped a Chinese man named Ming Kai in order to learn the secrets of silk production. Poor Ming Kai, I loved him and felt so bad for the terrible way he was treated.

In addition to the story-line of Rachel leaving Roam and Helen’s grief afterwards, a parallel story follows a man named Markus, a relative of Ming Kai’s, who lives in Arcadia and guards an incredible secret. Eventually the two stories collide and that’s when things really get interesting. Wallace has the ability to turn seemingly innocent events into tragedies later in the story. Every single thing mentioned in Roam comes back later in the story, and in ways that you can’t predict.

One of the best things about this book is the way the characters grow and change. When the story began, I couldn’t stand Helen. She was an evil, manipulative sister whose jealousy over Rachel made her do awful things. But little by little, Helen becomes a different person, and I grew to love her. Rachel also goes through big changes, but I don’t want to spoil them for you. Let’s just say that when she discovers that Helen has been lying to her their entire lives, she isn’t happy about it.

Roam has so many wonderfully quirky characters. Two of my favorites are Digby, the “smallest man in Roam” who runs the local bar and is one of only two people in town who can see the hordes of ghosts that live there; and Smith the Lumberjack, a simple but kind man who loves his many dogs and is heartbroken when one of them goes missing. I love this passage when Smith is telling his lumberjack friends about his decision to quit being a lumberjack and move away:

“No,” Smith said. “Not Arcadia. That’s where all my heartache started. I never want to see Arcadia again.”

The other lumberjacks shifted a bit on the huge felled oak that was their fire-bench. That word, heartache, made them uncomfortable.

“No,” Smith said. “I think I’ll go on down to Roam instead.”

“Roam,” the brother said. “Roam?”

“There’s a place to drink in Roam,” he said, “And there’s women.”

“But no trees,” the brother said. “Not like these. And no lumberjacks.”

“No,” he said. “And I’ll miss you, you can be sure of that.”

“Don’t,” the brother said and spit in the fire, where it sizzled. “Knowing you’re out there, missing us, isn’t likely to help us much up here.”

Roam is filled with so many wise and memorable quotes, that I can’t help sharing a couple:

There is no greater grief than that of a man with a broken heart who only just learned he had a heart at all.

and

A storyteller makes up things to help other people. A liar makes up things to help himself.

Like the rest of the book, the ending really caught me by surprise, but felt like one of those rare, perfect endings. Wallace shares many words of wisdom about life in The Kings and Queens of Roam, but I found his main message to be this: that stories have the power to change people’s lives, in both good ways and bad. For a superb reading experience, you can’t do any better. Highly recommended!

Many thanks to Emma at Regal Literary for supplying a review copy.

Check out this short video with Daniel Wallace as he talks about the book!

You can find The Kings and Queens of Roam here: