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Title: Trutor & the Balloonist/ Trutor and the Balloonist by Debbie Lee Wesselmann ISBN: 1-878448-74-9 Publisher: MacMurray & Beck Communication Pub. Date: May, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.62 (13 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Engaging Eccentrics Elucidate Enigmas...Exquisitely
Comment: Michelle Trutor (mostly called Trutor in the book) is rather at loose ends after leaving her abusive boyfriend, and accepts a vague job offer from aging attorney Arthur Wharton (whom she refers to as The Balloonist). Arthur and his twin brother Proctor live in the house where their adoptive sister Caroline raised them and then died, under strange circumstances, several years before. Trutor's assignment is to explore the mystery of Caroline, and to write her biography.

Sounds simple enough but, as Trutor discovers, Caroline was a complex and difficult woman, who has shrouded herself in layers of mystery, a room full of journals, complex victorian riddles, paintings, and a coded map that symbolizes her life.

Trutor quickly becomes immersed in this strange quest, and in Caroline's world, and as she does she also becomes part of the Whartons and their dysfunctional family. What happens? What does she learn about Caroline? What does she learn about herself? You will just have to read it and see!

Trutor is an exquisitely crafted book. The writing is lucid and poetic, the characters engaging and complex, the New England ambience is convincing, and the underlying message is powerful: Love has the power to redeem. This is not a totally easy book to read. It takes concentration, and you will probably take the time, as I did, to solve some of the riddles, which will cause you to put down the book and think. There are many characters in the book, and you will have to do some checking back to remind yourself who they are and how they relate to the story. Still, it moves along and is well worth the effort. I recommend this one highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber

Rating: 5
Summary: Riddling with a Point
Comment: It may be impossible to pigeonhole this book. Part mystery, part romance, part art history, part social ill investigation, part New England travelogue - and none of those categories really says what this book is.

Michelle Trutor is engaged by her friend Arthur Wharton (the 'balloonist') to help decipher the life of his adoptive sister Caroline, at least partly as a gesture to give Michelle a safe place to stay away from her abusive boyfriend. But what starts as a task that she can bury herself in to hide from her problems quickly becomes near-totally absorbing, as she finds all the members of the Wharton family to be at least mildly eccentric, and whose life-style has been sharply warped be the terms of Caroline's will. Caroline herself is slowly revealed via journal entries, interviews with former acquaintances, and most especially by the artworks and Victorian-styled riddles she has left behind.

This is where this book shines, as each character is beautifully limned by Wesselman's pen, and all the characters become interesting as persons you would like to know. Caroline's journal entries have a completely different feel and style from Trutor's ruminations, but both are highly appropriate for their characters; Arthur and his twin brother Proctor are diametric opposites who nevertheless display a bone-deep similarity; Sissy, the town librarian saved from her own troubles with an abusive husband by Trutor, develops from a non-descript mouse to an independent lady. All are believable people, even if they are not just like your next-door neighbor - and that is a good part of the charm and value of this book.

The action develops logically, with proper 'clues' laid before the revelations about Caroline and her life. Those clues in the form of riddles will also stretch your mind if you try to solve them by yourself, as the answers are far from obvious, but very important to the final resolution of book. The powerful theme of just what damage abusive people can wreak and how to deal with such people is developed as both an overt theme in the persons of Trutor's boyfriend and Sissy's husband, and a more buried thread in the visage of Caroline's effects on those around her both during her life and after her death.

The book can be read quickly (though trying to solve those riddles may slow you down a lot!) and never seems to develop any dry patches. The descriptions of the New England area are almost lyrical and very accurate (I've been to most of the places described in this book). Perhaps the only thing stopping this from being a great book is that it is too short to develop the full depth of all the characters (I would have loved to learn more about what makes Proctor tick). As it is, and regardless of what category of fiction you might think this falls into, this is very entertaining book, with lovely people, a mind-stretcher, and with something significant to say about a problem that is all too endemic within our society.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Rating: 5
Summary: Begin at the River Trats...
Comment: Arthur "the Balloonist" Wharton is a friend indeed. He has rescued young Michelle Trutor from her abusive boyfriend, and brought her to his New Hampshire home (believed by some to be haunted) to unravel a mystery. He wants her to write a book about his much older and long-dead sister, Caroline, who raised him and his twin brother, but was a cold and cruel stranger to them. Caroline left a series of riddles, a strange map, and a journal as clues to her secret life and her real identity, which take Trutor from Boston to London and back again in a shocking conclusion.

This unusual story will keep you guessing, and will give you some scares and laughs along the way. The author has created unique and vibrant characters: Trutor is strong, intelligent, and brave, Arthur is sweet and vulnerable, his brother Proctor is wildly eccentric, niece Ramona is hard as nails, on the surface at least, houseguest Sissy is struggling with an abusive husband, and Caroline's character reaches out from the grave to frighten and fascinate.

The picturesque countryside of New England is described in such enchanting terms you will want to see it for yourself. You will enjoy trying to figure out the riddles and clues to Caroline's double and even triple life, but even more, you will enjoy the deep bond of friendship between Trutor and the Balloonist.