TRWR: What role do secrets play in the novel?

Hardly any characters in TRWR did not have secrets, painful and sometimes isolating secrets. For Brody and Angie, the secrets they kept were of mostly of past behavior of which they were ashamed; Brody his conduct during the war and Angie of prostituting herself. While that behavior was necessary for their survival, both hid their past until first, Angie was forced to reveal her past to Brody or Garnet would and Brody then found himself able to share his secrets with Angie, including his contemporary destruction of evidence in the killing of Jimmy Quinn. For Brody and Angie, I think learning one another’s secrets allowed them to risk a relationship.

There are others with secrets. Brody and Garnet keep their affair secret; whether to protect themselves and their reputations or their family, I am uncertain.

But, some secrets are meant to protect others. Marta keeps secret the father of J.P. as do Noah and Kyoko. Charlie pledges secrecy to Marta when Marta confesses to killing Jimmy. Marta never tells Colleen of her abuse at the hands of her father. And Brody only reveals that he knew who killed Jimmy Quinn and why after his death and to Charlie who has kept that secret for years.

In the Epilogue, we learn that Charlie has been a “confessor” to Angie and Brody and to Scott who gradually comes to terms with his hand in the death of Creasy. Kind of makes me wonder how many other secrets each of these people had and ultimately shared. In many ways, TRWR is a story of forgiveness and the struggle to extend that to oneself.

Both Angie and Brody kept secrets, I believe, for the same reason that most people keep secrets: for fear of not being accepted and loved if others knew those secrets.

Angie is “flamboyant in expressing her Southern roots,” especially in the food served in The Wagon Wheel Cafe where she works with her mother-in-law. Most people think Jewel is a better and more interesting place since she arrived. Angie journals, sometimes just a line or two, sometimes more. Her journals are a testament to what Felix Klein said about his own life and what Angie believes is characteristic of most people: “they are broken and they are blessed.” Her journals contain her real name Jolie Rae LeBlanc and how her father’s third wife made sure that she could read and write; Mama Farrah taught her manners and how to speak to disguise her bayou upbringing. She protected Jolie Rae from assault from her brothers and when she was dying, she sent Jolie Rae away to where she had come from, an upscale house of prostitution. It was there that Jolie Rae met Christian Madison who only saw something good and beautiful in her. It is Brody’s sister-in-law Garnet who found Angie’s secrets when Angie’s diaries were mistakenly placed in a box of book donations. Garnet did not show the journals to Brody, but tells Angie that all she wants is for Angie to tell Brody.

“Human beings are wired to remember. Struggle as we may to stuff the past out of sight and out of mind, nature has devised triggers that bring back even the most unwelcome memory.” That is what happens to Brody and how some of his secrets are revealed. An eshaku bow, a gesture of casual greeting from Kyoko awakened “old angers, old hate, that ripped open old, deeply painful wounds from his time in an undocumented Japanese POW camp in Burma. Since Quinn’s chewed up body was pulled from the Alabaster, the nightmares from the war returned: “The burning men, the Asian girl whose smile had betrayed him and the ghost of the man he’d murdered.”

When Angie tells Brody of her past, his comment to her is one that he hasn’t taken to heart for himself. “We do what we have to, all of us. We survive.” To avoid capture by a Japanese patrol, Brody smothered McMillan who was delirious from gangrene and dying. When the Japanese began killing those in the prison camp, Brody managed to escape. Because of those events, he has considered himself and murderer and a coward. But he reveals these secrets and the destruction of evidence to Angie, also confirming to her his affair with Garnet.

Their honesty with each other provides a basis for their relationship and healing for both.

Jane and Nancy, those are such good summaries! So many secrets in this story. People keep them for so many reasons; some, like you said, Jane, do it out of shame; some do it to protect. Some secrets are kept because they are just too painful to reveal, too, and people don’t want to have to deal with the emotional impact of that, so bury those thoughts, and just try to move on with their lives. It’s a form of self-preservation in that case. I think both Brody and Angie did that, too, though I think both benefited from finally being able to let those secrets out and not be judged by one another. Sometimes things just have to be said, at least once, to another human being. Their sharing of their experiences allowed them to find comfort in one another, and built trust, and enriched their relationship.

Let me just say I thought the plot with Angie’s diaries and her panic when she realizes they are gone was one of the most suspenseful parts of the book for me. As soon as she told her son to get the boxes for Garnett I thought “oh no!”

I think for Angie and Brody, they needed to share their secrets with each other if they were going to have a truthful relationship, as you all have mentioned. Both were looking for a romantic relationship without secrets where they could be their true selves. I do think Angie would have told Brody her secrets without Garnett’s interference but maybe not so quickly.

There are so many other secrets in the book, many of which serve the overall mystery and plot but others that provide character growth and insights into their motivations. I agree that many of the secrets were self-protection or also to protect others (which was the case with Marta and her children). Scott’s secrets, for me, were a little bit different. He keeps secrets from his mother almost as a means to assert his independence. His secrets tie in to his growing into adulthood (sadly, he is forced into choices that mature him beyond his years, much like the men in the story who went to war and come back changed by the violence they experience). His secrets stood out for me because of how they contrasted with the adult ones in the story.