Good to a Fault
by Marina Endicott
Set in Saskatoon, Canada, this is a novel of trying to do the right thing and not knowing where to draw the line. Good to a Fault is a sweet story with endearing characters you find yourself cheering for ... even the ones you don't like very much. Clara is our protagonist. She's middle aged, unmarried and childless, dissatisfied but mostly accepting of her job at an insurance company, and mulling over the universal questions of what she wants for her future, how so much time has already passed her by, and what mistakes she wishes she could do over again. I pictured her as eager and a little bit frumpy, prone to spending too much time on the question of her place in the universe, but ultimately likeable and someone you'd want to hug.
Enter the Gage family. Clara, distracted with her musings while driving, hits their car, which doubles as their home. The mother, Lorraine, goes to the hospital where she is treated for very minor scrapes and also ... diagnosed with cancer. Clay, the floundering and unreliable father of the family, takes off, leaving Lorraine and the kids to fend for themselves in a hospital in a strange city with no resources. Horrified and determined to help, Clara invites Lorraine's three children and their curmudgeonly grandmother to stay in her home while Lorraine is treated and tries to recover.
As Clara, on the fly, learns the ins and outs of raising children and putting their needs ahead of her own while also running back and forth to the hospital to support Lorraine and working around Grandma's self-centered nastiness, she grapples with another set of existential questions. What does it mean to be "good" and how much do we owe those we have wronged? While she's sorting this out, she (and we, along with her) falls in love with Dolly, Trevor, and baby Pearce, the children who have weathered poverty, homelessness, their father's alcoholism, their mother's uncertainty ... and whose spirits still shine like little reminders of hope and love in the darkest of circumstances. She falls in love with the steadfast Episcopal priest Paul, too, and begins to imagine themselves as a little family. Then Lorraine gets better. Which is a good thing. Right?
I confess that I saw a little bit of myself in Clara, which always makes the reading experience resonate. I'm not unmarried or childless, but I am middle aged and occasionally frumpy. And I do tend to get myself spun up about those meaning-of-life kinds of questions that leave me wondering if I'm doing all I'm meant to do with, in the words of poet Mary Oliver, my "one wild and precious life." And in the spirit of full disclosure, I do lean a little bit too far forward at times in my efforts to be helpful. Fortunately, I've never moved a homeless family of strangers into my home or completely remodeled my house to make it more comfortable for them, as Clara does. And I guess I've never felt like I was obligated to do good, just that I would really like to. I have definitely experienced feeling unappreciated or unwanted in my effort to help, and while that stings in the moment, it usually serves as a good reminder of boundaries and the limitations we have on our ability to influence another person.
Clara's story doesn't end the way she envisioned it might, but it ends as well as can be expected given the circumstances, the personalities, and the weaknesses of the human condition. That's another good reminder ... that we don't have a crystal ball to show us the future or the outcome of our actions. Our desire to do the right thing and the leaps of faith we often take to execute that desire ... they have to be enough to sustain us.
