Valentine By Elizabeth Wetmore

Valentine is the debut novel from acclaimed author Elizabeth Wetmore. An instant New York Times Bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick, it’s a stunning novel of literary fiction that depicts the lives of several women in Odessa, Texas during the 1970s as they wrestle with the aftermath of the rape of Gloria Ramirez early in the morning on Valentine’s Day, 1976. Told through the different women’s points of view, Wetmore puts on a master class in storytelling.

The novel opens with Gloria Ramirez escaping her assailant, Dale Strickland, who brutally attacked her the night before, as she trudges barefoot three miles through cow pastures to Mary Rose’s front porch, a pregnant mother at home with her young daughter. Gloria begs Mary Rose for water and shelter. Strickland eventually shows up for Gloria, but Mary Rose keeps him at bay by pointing her rifle at him until the cops show up. A tense opening to a novel that unspools the lives of these two women and the others that orbit this event: Corrine, young Debra Ann, Ginny, Suzanne, Karla. All of their lives are revealed and the indignities they face from the men in Odessa, as well as judgment and shame they face from the community as a whole when they don’t act the way they should: prim, proper, quiet, subservient. When Strickland gets off with only probation and a fine, this injustice sends Mary Rose off the deep end, her rage not easy to quell.

Although this is a debut, Wetmore has published short stories for a while in notable literary journals. Her confidence shines through the various narrative points of view, particularly with the first-person Mary Rose, third-person Corrine, and first-person plural (!!!) Karla chapters. Wetmore has beautifully executed metaphors and similes and her characters are fully-formed and four-dimensional, the entirety of their humanity on display: their despair, their love, their rage, and their dissatisfaction with life in Odessa. Although the story opens with a couple of intense chapters that would inform most readers that a crime thriller will be told, Wetmore downshifts into the lives of all these women who orbit around the horrific event that Gloria Ramirez endured. Then once Dale Strickland’s trial commences two-thirds of the way through the novel, the intensity picks back up, only to extinguish any sense of hope or justice for Glory (Gloria changes her name after the rape) as well as the other women invested in her well-being. It’s a brutally sad turn of events.  

But where the novel shines most brightly are with its characters. I became fully invested in these women. I felt I knew these women. I have met and known many like them here in Texas. Many of their observations about the others in Odessa are brutally honest, searing, and sometimes hilarious. And that is a marvelous thing for readers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and I highly recommend it. I would give this novel 5 stars.

Buy the paperback on Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/152/9780062913272