Mallory Moe is a veteran Army mechanic in her mid-twenties. She lives with her girlfriend Andrea and works the overnight shift at her local gas station. While she’s figuring out how she wants to spend the rest of her life, the country is on lockdown and she struggles with confinement in their cabin. It doesn’t help that she has a hypersensitivity to sound as a result of her childhood trauma. And when Andrea’s behavior begins to turn quite toxic, Mallory experiences flashbacks to her troubling past. After an especially troubling altercation, Mallory escapes on a dog walk and encounters Shay, an injured teenager who needs help. A Winter’s Rime by Carol Dunbar follows Mallory’s journey in her attempt to save a girl not unlike her own teenage self, which catapults her own path to healing and forgiveness. 

When Mallory hits her boiling point, she spills over. She becomes extremely violent, not unlike her abusive alcoholic father. At first a relationship with Andrea seemed to be ideal. Unfortunately, it eventually took a turn for the worse. Andrea constantly questions Mallory’s fascination with their neighbor, Landon, even though Mallory’s interest is one of admiration and not romance. Nevertheless, Andrea can’t seem to let it go, and Mallory doesn’t know how to resolve conflict without causing physical harm. 

So when an abused and terrified Shay comes into Mallory’s life, she can’t fight the desire to help her. In doing so, she hopes that she can somehow prevent Shay from going down the same dark spiral that Mallory fell into after her own similar scarring experience. And in the following weeks, Mallory discovers more about herself and how her troubled past affected her personality and ability to cope with stressful situations. But she has to contend with her demons in the process, and it won’t be easy. 

Dunbar creates a powerful and sympathetic protagonist with Mallory in A Winter’s Rime. The more I got to know Mallory, the more invested I was in her success in overcoming her childhood trauma and reconnecting with who she used to be. All the characters were compelling and fully-developed. I appreciated her coworker Noah, who has Asperger’s, for his honesty and allowing Mallory to achieve the personal growth she needs. And even though I hated Andrea and her incredibly evil treatment of Mallory, readers might find a way to empathize with her through Mallory’s perspective by the end of the novel. As a warning to readers, content triggers include alcoholism, domestic abuse, sexual assault, human trafficking, generational trauma, and death. If readers can handle the dark moments of the story, reaching the healing part of Mallory’s journey becomes that much more rewarding. 

Carol Dunbar joins us as a guest on The Nerd Cantina Show podcast. During the Cantina Conversation, she talks about how much work went into creating such a compelling story, and what she hopes readers take away from it. Keep an ear out for an upcoming episode and preorder A Winter’s Rime, available September 12.