The Fly on the Rose is a deep, dark thoughtful tale of love and non-love, secrets kept and trust betrayed, and the utter unpredictability of life's twists and turns. But, as noted below, this is manifestly not, in my opinion, a romance novel. It is a morality tale filled with uncertainty and lacking clear answers.

The central character is Mary Jane Bell, but don't look for her name very often in this book. When she's out clubbing and flaunting her beauty, she's "Temple." At work, she's "Belle." She has as many names as she has personalities. She is deaf, part of her insecurity, her lack of confidence.

One evening, she stumbles into Murph's, a bar/restaurant, and is spotted by Oswald Kauffmann, who has adopted the name "Q" as his moniker. Q is, by all accounts, a physically unattractive person. He describes himself as "ugly." Never married, he wants nothing more than to meet the right woman, raise children, and continue to excel in his chosen profession of house-building. Emboldened by alcohol, he approaches the stunningly beautiful Temple and proposes marriage. He slips a ring, a family heirloom, on her finger. After days of squirming and squeezing, she finally gets the ring off and sets out to find Q, to return his ring.

Temple has a past, including an ex-husband and two children who she is forbidden from seeing by court order. She and her ex-husband, Charles, are bitter enemies. From time to time, Temple tries to get a letter to her children. Charles, who has now remarried, is furious and takes steps to prevent any further communication between Temple and her children.

And then an odd thing happens -- Temple is strangely attracted to Q. When he learns she is a Mormon, he insists on coming to Church with her, and begins a journey toward membership.

One day, when Temple is confronted by her angry ex-husband in the parking lot of her ward (where Q has been attending, part of his infatuation with Temple), she rashly announces that she and Q are to be married. Q is eventually baptized, and they are indeed married.

Problem is, since she has never had her sealing to her ex-husband annulled, any children born to her and Q would be sealed eternally to Charles, her ex-husband, not to Q. She elects not to tell Q about this. In fact, he has no idea that there are two other children involved.

And another problem: Temple isn't in love with Q. "Love" is not an option for this troubled woman. This becomes a marriage of convenience. But only from her perspective. Q is truly in love with Temple, and wants desperately for this to work.

As the story unfolds, we find what might have been an insipid tale of romance and faith crises, but is instead a taut, dark, complex tale of human fallibility and the inability of religion to meet the needs of the weak. Temple's greatest desire was that Q would not show any interest in the Church. Getting him involved in the very lifestyle that has caused her so much misery could only make matters worse. If she could only keep Q at arms' length from her religious affiliation, she could avoid the entanglements that would arise when the subject of sealing came up.

But Q is drawn into the endless cycle of Church meetings and callings, and finds it invigorating. And when their first son, Will, is born, he is ecstatic. He is yet to learn that Will will not be "his," in an eternal sense. When he does find out, he begins to wonder whether both his marriage, and his decision to join the Church, weren't mere fits of madness.

Q's family (he still lives with his parents) is populated with interesting and generous people. Temple's family is likewise interesting. The characters in this book are sharply drawn -- I could almost picture what they looked like (except for Q -- what did such a deformed face look like?). But as his character develops, I cared less and less about his physical appearance, and more about his noble, albeit fragile, character.

Temple uses her deafness almost as a weapon and an excuse. She is, to put it mildly, a basket-case. The more I learned about her, the less I liked her. Her friends adored her, and it's almost comical when disparate friends meet and learn that Temple is known by different names in her different life situations. (And it is instructive to realize she prefers the name Temple -- the name she used when she was living a lifestyle most unlike that which she demonstrated in Church.)

Frankly, I was glad to be done with this book. It was a dark, heavy read. I was exhausted when I was done. I really wanted to be rid of Temple, and I wanted Q to move in next door. I wanted to know why things were so upside-down in Temple's world, why one and one didn't add to two, but I wasn't willing to spend another minute with Temple.

Beginning on page 155, there is an extended discussion about the biblical figure Job, told in the context of a Church meeting discussion. I found this narrative to be pivotal to understanding the whole book. And I knew, despite my wish to put as much distance as possible between Temple and myself, I had to work my way through this story, just as Job had to work his way through confounding and disconcerting life changes.

Is it inconsistent to say that I enjoyed a book and that I'm glad it's done? I hope not. I think this book first came up in a discussion about the value of romance novels. When the book arrived, I knew I'd read it, but I was prepared to hate it. "Romance" is just not my genre. This is no romance novel. This is a maelstrom of loves and hates, of trusts and distrusts, and hope and despair.

I would be remiss in not mentioning, as I am wont to do, the typos and grammatical errors. "Breath" should be "breathe." "Chili" should be "Chile." (One is a food, the other is a country.) "Sight" should be "site." And so on. Happily, there are only about a dozen and a half of these errors in the entire book, and are therefore less distracting than they could have been.

I recommend The Fly on the Rose, and fully expect you to be just as happy as I was to come to the end and move on to something a bit less troubling. This is a well-written book, and I hope to see more from this author.

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Jeff Needle
September 30, 2003