The Bliss House

In the rural Ontario Bliss House live 17-year-old Cam; his cousins Wes, who’s in his late twenties; and Dorie, who’s five and is a distant relative Gramp and Gran took in. Gran died a few months ago and her abusive, alcoholic spouse not long after, but Gramp is not quite gone, his corpse hidden under a tarp in the house’s cold room. With no will leaving the house and farm to the remaining family, what else can they do? Wild-child Dorie is able to keep Gramp’s death a secret, as well as her knowledge of the game Cam and Wes play in Wes’s bedroom, the same one, she thinks, the nasty neighbor boy, Kyle, wanted to play with her in the barn. The ramshackle family is just starting to believe things are safe when Kyle’s mother sets the Misses Gurney on them. Beulah and Audrey Gurney are with Bethel Baptist and Dorie’s attire—or lack of it—when she plays in the yard is, they say, “the Lord’s business.” They brush Kyle’s behavior aside (“They’re Pentecostal”) but cannot see their way to ignoring Wes and Cam’s “sin,” launching the Bliss boys on a startlingly violent and engrossing path to keep their family and love safe from the state. Young adults as well as adult readers who aren’t squeamish (terms like “corpseooze” stand out) will root hard for this loving family and stay up to find out how their bizarre, Murphy’s-law-ridden odyssey turns out. Playwright Bartley’s previous fiction is set in Balkan war zones, making this memorable work a fresh start.