Lovely, Dark, and Deep

Lovely, Dark, and Deep, a romance novel for young adults by Amy McNamara, tells the story of Wren Wells, a teenaged girl whose boyfriend, Patrick, was killed an accident that left Wren wounded but very much alive. Unable to cope with the aftermath of the accident, Wren moves in with her father, an artist living in the woods of rural Maine. Amy McNamara has written one other novel, A Flicker in the Clarity, and has published a number of poems in literary magazines.

The book begins just after the car accident that killed eighteen-year-old Wren Wells's boyfriend, Patrick. Wren lives in New York City with her mother. Before the accident, she was planning to go to college, exploring a career as a photographer, and to continue her romance with her boyfriend. Wren, sitting next to Patrick in the accident that took his life, remained mostly unscathed – she has some physical trauma as a result, but no injuries that won't heal. That she survived becomes one of Wren's greatest conflicts. Her grief leads her to convince her mother to let her move to rural Maine, where her father is living and working as an artist in a house deep in the woods. Wren tells her mother that her time in Maine will help her get back on her feet and back on track after the accident.

Wren's father is distant, though not unloving. Wren spends most of her time in Maine walking the trails in the woods near her father's house, biking, running, and sleeping. Mostly, she avoids her father, who is usually too caught up in his own work to care much about Wren's overwhelming grief. Wren hasn't had much interest in college or in photography since she the accident, and she finds that the longer she spends in Maine, the farther she falls into numbing grief over her lost boyfriend.



Wren's mother is worried about her daughter's distance and lack of interest in all of the hobbies and dreams she had before the accident, but the distance between New York and Maine makes it difficult for her to connect with Wren. On her end, Wren mostly ignores her mother's phone calls, instead, going for long walks alone. Wren enjoys the feeling of running through the deep snow and hiding from the world; she doesn't have any intention of rejoining the world that took Patrick from her randomly and without explanation.

Over time, though, Wren is forced to come out of hiding, if only in small ways. The nature of small-town life is that everyone knows your business. Wren remains quiet around the people in town, who are desperate to know why she has come to live with her father. She starts working at the local library, where she meets some locals and finds solace in the books on the shelves. She befriends an artist fellow who spends a few months living at her father's cabin. Finally, Wren meets Cal Owens, a boy who confuses her and makes her wonder if she could fall in love again.

Cal is the son of her father's architect. On the surface, he appears normal, but Wren soon discovers that Cal has his own demons to work through. They bond over their pain, grief, and confusion about the world, but both of them carry so much weight that it seems unwise for them to fall in love.



Initially, Wren has no interest at all in Cal Owens. She is too wrapped up in keeping herself hidden from the world, and still too grief-stricken over the loss of Patrick and the trauma from the accident that took him away. But Cal sees a strength and a shared pain in Wren that makes him persistent, and as the novel continues, the two troubled teenagers begin to share their difficult experiences – the experiences that draw them to each other, and the ones that drive them away from the world. Through her relationship with Cal, Wren begins to find a way to express her grief. Though initially, Wren felt her time in Maine was nothing but a retreat from the world, she slowly begins to realize that it is impossible to hide from yourself, no matter how remote an area you disappear into.

The title of Amy McNamara's novel comes from a Robert Frost poem, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The poem’s most famous lines, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep,” reflect the rural and reflective nature of McNamara's book. They also reflect the process of grief that is the focus of McNamara's novel, and the long distance that Wren has to travel in order to find herself again after the car accident and the death of her boyfriend.