Book Review: The Wrong Good Deed by Caroline B. Cooney

In this sequel to Caroline B. Cooney’s Edgar-nominated Before She Was Helen, two elderly women discover that the past cannot stay buried forever, and that the ramifications of deeds both good and evil can cast an extremely long and sometimes even fatal shadow.

Clemmie might as well be the resident general caregiver of Sun City, her South Carolina retirement community. Innately practical and organized, her past has also made her something of a soft touch. Without many obligations besides teaching Latin at a nearby high school, she’s often free to drive her incapacitated neighbors to appointments and to volunteer—or to be volunteered—for Sun City’s assorted and frequent social events. 

Mostly, she doesn’t mind helping out. When her neighbor Muffin Morgan asks to go to church with her one Sunday, Clemmie willingly obliges. Muffin hasn’t really settled on a church since coming to Sun City, and Clemmie is happy to help her find a spiritual home, perhaps in Clemmie’s own Trinity Hill.

So it’s a shock when, during the service, a terrified Muffin abruptly demands to leave. Muffin does her best to exit as furtively and swiftly as possible, and insists that a dismayed Clemmie do the same. When Muffin claims in the car later on that they had to go because she recognized a sinister figure from her past sitting in the congregation, Clemmie can’t decide whether to humor her or to tell her that she’s being silly. But as Muffin gradually reveals her story to her neighbor, Clemmie realizes that the practical schoolmarm in her really ought to have given way to the compassionate friend. After all, having the truth of her own past uncovered is one of Clemmie’s deepest fears:

What am I actually afraid of? Admitting that I stole Helen? Losing the respect of others? Being arrested and receiving a prison sentence? Or am I mostly afraid of being fingerprinted? Because that could lead to what else I did[.]

 

Muffin must feel this awful about her past coming back, thought Clemmie. 

 

I should have been nicer to her.

 

But that was always the case, wasn’t it? You should have been nicer.

Even as Clemmie is resolved to be kinder to her fear-stricken friend, Muffin is trying to deal with her own reckoning. Her one great act of courage as a young woman was to stop a hideous crime from occurring before she fled not only the state but the country. Now, faces from her past have reemerged, not only in church and Sun City but in the national media as well. What will Muffin do once the spotlight finds her, and shines a light on the good deed that changed her life forever?

Some people might welcome a chance to trumpet their bravery, but Muffin is still fearful of any possible repercussions. Besides, she has the sinking sensation that what she did, while deeply commendable, just wasn’t enough given where she lived and what she lived through:

Over the decades to come, Muffin read armloads of historical novels and mysteries set in Europe during World War II. She would think how despicable those Germans were who cooperated in the atrocities of the Nazis. Now she thought, I cooperated in the atrocities of segregation.

 

In her living room, in front of her TV, Muffin straightened up. I didn’t do anything, she reminded herself.

 

But that was the point. She didn’t do anything.

As the man Muffin saved continues his public search for her, other figures from her past come looking for answers, not all of which she can or wants to give. Meanwhile, at least one killer waits in the background for the perfect moment to strike, in horrific repayment for a good deed gone terribly awry.

Ms. Cooney’s lean, thoughtful book about aging and regret grapples expertly with the violence of the past and how it carries over to the present day. While Clemmie’s past is specific to her as a woman, Muffin’s is very much entangled in one of the greater sins of American history: segregation and the violence visited upon Black people and, to a lesser extent, their allies. Neither Clemmie nor Muffin are perfectly good, which lends them greater weight as believable, relatable protagonists. Each tries and fails and tries again, in a continuing effort which speaks to their characters, even if the outcomes are sometimes less than optimal. The novel’s ending points the way to a hard-earned grace, not only for the people in this book, but for the very future of the United States of America.