SOURCE: "Sins of the Father," in The New York Times Book Review, January 16, 1994, p. 11.

[Krist is a prizewinning American short story writer. In the mixed review below, he praises Shea's focus on child abuse and survival in Hula, but faults her use of a child as a narrator.]

Children, like many other small, apparently fragile creatures of nature, are actually great geniuses of survival. Forced to live in a world dominated by larger and more powerful animals, they learn to retreat to the inconspicuous corners of an unfriendly situation—accommodating the whims of the reigning bully, cultivating unobtrusiveness, vanishing when danger threatens only to re-emerge when the blustering of giants is past. Circumstances that would paralyze the average adult with despondency won't necessarily defeat a child, who doesn't labor under the same expectations of what life should be. As a result, children can thrive in the most unlikely...