But I Smile Anyway…

Today, I am on the blog tour for Dean Koontz’s newest novel, The Friend of the Family.

The Blurb

A girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose in a moving fable about family, sacrifice, and transcendent love by #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.

The human ‘oddities’ in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised.

But Alida is something else. The real thing.

Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum’s golden ticket. Until she’s rescued by two compassionate strangers.

Franklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds exactly that. Yet despite everyone’s overwhelming generosity and acceptance, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl.

Her dreams bear that out. They’re vivid, unsettling, and threatening. Alida fears that they’re also warnings. And that it’s the Fairchilds who may need rescue from a bad, bad world.

Alida will do anything to help those she now holds nearest and dearest.

Empowered with a purpose to vanquish evil, she will not fail her family.

My Review

The Friend of the Family by Dean Koontz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was introduced to Dean Koontz and his quirky books a couple of years ago, and I thought they wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but I must say I’m always pleasantly surprised by how drawn in I get to these stories.
The Friend of the Family is my favourite one so far.
Set in the years between the two World Wars, the story is told from the perspective of Alide, a young woman who is discovered by the showbiz couple Franklin and Loretta Fairchild at a speakeasy one night.
Alide is an attraction in one of those travelling ‘freak’ shows. Born with an unfortunate disability, her ‘owner’ takes advantage of her, treating her as a commodity rather than a human.
The couple are horrified, and something spurs them on to take Alide under their wing, adopting her and giving her all the love and family she has missed out on from her younger years.
Alide becomes Adiel and is surrounded by people who either don’t know the full extent of her disability or don’t care. She flourishes, supporting her new family in so many ways over the years as she begins to understand her own reason for being in this world.
I was so emotionally invested in this story, wanting our Alide/Adeil to be accepted for the amazing person she is, and I did cry at the end, I will admit. The entire tale is beautifully crafted, and really shows that there are some amazing people out there in this world, alongside the awful ones, and that we shouldn’t give up hope, ever.

About the Author

Dean Koontz won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition when he was a senior in college, and has been writing ever since. Fourteen of his novels have risen to number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list (One Door Away From Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street), making him one of only a dozen writers ever to have achieved that milestone. Sixteen of his books have risen to the number one position in paperback. His books have also been major bestsellers in countries as diverse as Japan and Sweden. Many of his books have been made into films.

The New York Times has called his writing “psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying”. The New Orleans Times-Picayune said Koontz is “at times lyrical without ever being naive or romantic. [He creates] a grotesque world, much like that of Flannery O’Conner or Walker Percy … scary, worthwhile reading.” Rolling Stone has hailed him as “America’s most popular suspense novelist”.

Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University), and his first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. His first day on the job, he discovered that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and Koontz was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: “I’ll support you for five years,” she said, “and if you can’t make it as a writer in that time, you’ll never make it.” By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of her husband’s writing career.

Dean Koontz lives in Southern California with Gerda and their golden retriever, Elsa. Dean and Gerda share a deep love of dogs.