Staff Pick – Invisible by Carla Buckley

Invisible by Carla Buckley is a light engaging read that illustrates the danger that secrets and lies cannot be sustained.

Dana Carlson, a munitions expert, left her small town home Black Bear as a girl thinking she would never return.

In the midst of her own crisis, in which a woman’s body is found in the destroyed rubble of one her building implosions, she receives a call from her niece Peyton, a girl she has never met, imploring her to come home. Dana’s sister Julie is gravely ill and her only hope is a kidney transplant from her sister. Sadly, Dana is too late to help and finds her niece and her brother-in-law struggling to cope with her loss. Before she died, Julie had been keeping a journal of other people in this small town who were also suffering from kidney disease, but alas she grew too ill to pursue her theories.

Invisible is told from alternating viewpoints, Dana’s and Peyton’s, slowly revealing Peyton’s animosity toward her aunt who she feels deserted her mother, and illuminating why Dana left. Dana returns to this small town which has a claustrophobic vibe as Dana revisits familiar haunts which contain all the familiar faces from her past. As she begins to investigate Julie’s concerns, she becomes a threat to this one industry town, and finds herself a target.

Invisible would be enjoyed by fans of Jodi Picoult whose novels explore controversial issues alongside emotional family relationships. The crusading qualities in Invisible bring to mind the film Erin Brockovich, whose subject has gone on to write fiction including Hot Water in which “Environmental activist AJ Palladino is no stranger to the juggling act of managing both work and family. But when she’s asked to leave home and take a case investigating a nuclear power plant which has had several accidents. It takes all her skills to keep her world from crashing down on her.”