Title: The Shingle Weaver’s Picnic
Author: P.C. Smith
Publisher: Mainspring Books
ISBN:‎ 1958434612
Pages: 260
Genre: Fiction
Reviewed by: Dan MacIntosh

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Much of P.C. Smith’s novel The Shingle Weaver’s Picnic is told through the young eyes of Annie Elizabeth Jordon, a girl known best as Cricket. Most of the story is set in Everett, Washington, where Cricket is spending the summer with her wise and moral grandparents. The setting is nearly perfect, filled with small town joviality and scenic boat rides. Cricket, it would seem, shouldn’t have a care in the world. However, as her story unfolds, we learn how she has many heavy cares for such a young child. Sadly, trouble so strong comes into her world, no bars of steel could ever keep out.

Cricket’s first personal crises happens when her young father is killed in World War II. This makes her mother a single mother, with another child on the way. While mom is pregnant, Cricket is sent to spend a summer with her grandparents. We get the immediate impression this summer vacation is an annual one, as she has established friendships when she arrives there. It is there she is forced to try and heal from losing a father she so dearly loved.

The story is one where one would least expect to find acts of evil taking place. In fact, Cricket’s second crises occurs during one of the happiest times of the year. It all develops during this small town’s annual fair. The scene is taken right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. There are rides for the kids, logrolling contests, piemaking competitions and all the Americana trimmings. These are supposed to be events to build lifelong memories upon. While the happenings of this one summer did, in fact, create distinctive memories, these were also the kind of recollections she’d gladly forget – if she ever could.

It’s a place where the greatest threat normally might have been the town drunk, instead the rape and murder of a young girl shattered the locale’s picturesque view. Although it’s likely Smith’s main intention for her book was to tell a story about lost innocence, she writes it in such a way it is also presented as a murder mystery story. The reader is led to believe that a young boy murdered this young girl, at first. That is until the town’s drunkard wife-abuser seemingly is exposed as the perpetrator. Yes, he was also involved in this crime, but he was the rapist, not the killer. Only toward the book’s end do we find out who the real killer actually is. Smith does a good job of stringing the reader along before eventually revealing the final damning facts of the case.

The victim is not only Cricket’s friend, but her grandfather is also a defense lawyer and becomes involved in the murder trial. She’s connected to it all in many respects. Cricket is thrown into a situation where the kids in her peer group must act as witnesses, and a few even end up being among the accused. This is not the way any kid wants to live. These are usually adult crimes. Before all this criminal behavior rocks her community, though, Cricket has a conversation with her grandfather where he tries to help her understand war’s evil that led to her father’s death. Her grandfather was previously also involved in a case that involved Japanese internment camps during WWII. These war-related incidents, though, are mostly due to adults not being able to resolve problems in a civil way. The murder of her friend, however, involves a young boy killing a young girl, which can be even more difficult to comprehend – especially for a child.

Yes, The Shingle Weaver’s Picnic is, well, no picnic, P.C. Smith is a gifted storyteller, though, and will keep you turning pages wondering what might happen next. It’s a story as compelling as it is troubling, and most certainly a memorable one.