Book Review: The Ballad of Two Sisters

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June 17

The Ballad of Two Sisters

by Darci Schummer

Genre: Literary Fiction / Family Life

ISBN: 9781956692969

Print Length: 234 pages

Publisher: Unsolicited Press

Reviewed by Elena Bellaart

The Ballad of Two Sisters follows the lives of sisters Stella and Helen and a cast of characters with whom their stories intersect. These include Stella's husband Gerald and son Jesse as well as the mortician who, at the end of Stella and Helen's lives, prepares their bodies for burial. Stella and Helen are the novel's emotional center; their relationship with one another is the one constant in an otherwise shifting landscape.

The sisters grow up in and around the Chicago suburbs in the aftermath of World War II, with a father who is violent and emotionally absent and a mother who never recovers from the regret that mars her life. Stella, the elder sister and characterized as the sturdier of the two, is Helen's childhood protector.

But when Stella reaches adulthood, she looks outward to escape the emotionally stunted terrain of her family life, going to college before meeting and marrying Gerald and having a child of her own. Helen, meanwhile, turns inward; the victim of childhood sexual abuse, she is distrustful of everyone except Stella and maintains a wary isolation from the world around her.