Turtle Under Ice: 03/13/20

Turtle Under Ice by Juleah del Rosario is a parallel narrative told in free form verse. The two voices are sisters: Rowena, the younger one, and Ariana, the older.

Ariana has gone missing, leaving on a personal mission to clear her head after the miscarriage her stepmother suffered. Rowena, meanwhile, is stuck at home with parents who have stopped functioning in their grief. No one is shopping for groceries. No one is doing the dishes. And neither of them seem to have noticed Ariana's absence.

Although Ariana takes a bus trip to a different city to see a friend and to have her painting displayed in an art show, her literal journey isn't what puts this novel onto the road narrative spectrum. Nor is Rowena's journey to find her sister — done after some sleuthing with her best friend.

Instead, it's a meta journey shared by the sisters and expressed through Ariana's painting, also titled "Turtle Under Ice." The painting is her recreation of a memory she and her sister share of their dead mother. It's the moment of sharing a memory that brings the two together, back in balance.

Put in terms of the RNS, the travelers are the sisters (CC), even though they do most of the journeying separately. Their destination is uhoria (CC) — namely their shared memories of their mother and the time when they were closer. The route taken is an offroad (66), one depicted in Ariana's painting, and one hinted at by the title of both the novel and the painting.

Four stars

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