Not your typical detective - Celine

Celine - art journal page

For the second time this summer, I found myself reading a story that involved a teenaged girl from a wealthy American family who finds herself pregnant during the years following World War II. Unlike Charlie St. Claire in Kate Quinn's The Alice Network (see my post) who is 19 and decides to keep her baby, Celine Watkins, of Peter Heller's novel Celine, is only 15 and her baby is given up for adoption. Both young women had difficult decisions to make regarding their pregnancy. Celine's decision would help to determine the course of the rest of her life.

After delivering her baby Celine returned to her private boarding school to complete her studies, went off to college, married and had a son. She was the unconventional member of her family by becoming a private detective and not your typical one at that. Celine only takes cases involving missing family members; often clients are looking for birth parents or children. On her travels, Celine continues to search the faces of women who would be the right age to be the daughter that she gave up all those years ago. As the novel unfolds, we learn about who Celine is and her family history. She is now in her sixties, remarried to Pete, suffering from emphysema, artist, master of acting, and a crack shot. We meet her adult son, Hank, who has learned his mother's secret from his dying aunt. Unknown to Celine, Hank in his early twenties went looking for his missing sister, and he might just have found her.

Celine's current case is  brought to her by Gabriella who is searching for her father a famous photographer who was presumed dead, eaten by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park. But there are way to many loose threads to the case when Celine picks up the trail. Celine and Pete have arrived in Jackson Hole to begin their hunt for Gabriella's father and she comments about this town as being only in existence as a location for fun which is very tiring, "Pursuing fun is exhausting. Having fun is just fun. Much more relaxing just to do your work, don't you think? I mean if you enjoy it. (p.138)" What a statement about the American way of life - we work really hard in order to have the time to chase our happiness. In fact Pete responds to her with this, "It's why I always felt coming back to the States after traveling was a bit stressful. I mean our job as citizens, apparently, is the pursuit of happiness. Something I always have to gird myself for. I'd much rather just be happy, or not. (p. 139)"

Being happy has been a topic of mine in earlier posts (Hector and the Search for Happiness, The Happiness Project, and Happiness on the Mind), and I think Pete's quote above hits the nail on the head - happiness is a decision to be or not to be. We can't find happiness by pursuing it (see how i became stupid) rather it is something that comes from within. I believe that we can pursue fun, excitement gained by doing activities,  spending time with other people, or engaging in hobbies. But too many of us work very hard to get those things we think will bring us happiness - a thinner body, a bigger bank account, a house in a better neighborhood, the promotion at work, a new spouse, and the list goes on. What we lose is the precious time to just be. I attended the funeral of a wonderful woman this week, and I know that when she came to her last moments it wasn't her bank account she was thinking about, but the precious time that she had spent being herself for that was her greatest accomplishment and didn't everyone at her funeral say so. This woman was authentic, she used her big booming voice and she wasn't afraid to tell you just how it was. That's the lesson for all of us to take away - to be happy, to be ourselves, to go out there and do life. Thanks Patricia B. for the lesson.