I love country music for the stories it tells. It’s music made for me, a kid raised in a trailer park on a perpetual quest for identity and purpose. In Dahlia Devine, the main character in Lori Rader-Day’s latest novel, Wreck Your Heart, I found a kindred spirit: a survivor of chaos, a person who doesn’t trust easily, if at all, the ground under her feet always uncertain, except when it comes to pursuing her one big dream. Dahlia wants to be a country singer, and her dream keeps her afloat in a world that could easily send a less determined character into deep despair. I was rooting for Dahlia on page one. It felt like this book, just like a great country music song, was written just for me, and that connection is all a reader can ever hope for.
Dahlia’s rough childhood is as much a gift as a curse, fatherless, her mother a drug addict, a foster kid by the age of six, then bounced around until she met Alex McPhee, who was, briefly, the only adult who had ever been there for her, sets her up to be an artist, always feeling like she has to prove herself. Alex looks out for Dahlia, gives her a place to crash when she needs it, and builds a stage in the bar he owns in Chicago so she can perform with her band. When we first meet Dahlia, she has broken up with her latest boyfriend, and she’s been evicted because he’s run off with the rent money. Dahlia ends up at Alex’s bar because she has nowhere else to go. Then her long-lost mother shows up and promptly disappears again. Followed by a half-sister she didn’t know she had, raised by a version of her mother who was straight and unfamiliar to Dahlia. The new sister wants to find her mother, and Dahlia, who has flown solo all her life, has the scary opportunity to sing a two-part family harmony. As always, in any good country song, when times get really dark, a ray of hope shines through the clouds. A man with a record label hears Dahlia and shows interest in her career. But the dream goes silent quickly when a dead body turns up behind Alex’s bar. Dahlia wants answers, and she goes looking for her missing mother and a killer at her own peril. What she finds changes everything she thought she knew about her family and herself, setting the stage for an ending that just might wreck her heart.
This aptly titled mystery novel is destined to be remembered for its authentic voice, narrative risk, and the strong, determined character that Dahlia Devine is. I’m so happy that I spent time with Dahlia on her quest to be somebody, and I think a whole crop of new readers this book will bring to Lori Rader-Day’s work will, too. Highly recommended for country music fans, mystery readers, and anyone who loves a great story written from the heart that goes straight to the heart.
