The Blue Door - (A Walkabout Book) by Janice Deal (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

How much responsibility and guilt can a mother bear for a child who has done wrong?

This is the question that haunts Flo when her daughter Teddy plans to visit after a long separation. The prospect of seeing Teddy brings back painful memories of Teddy's troubled past--a young teen imprisoned for committing murder. Can Flo find the strength to support or even cope with her daughter as she is now? Can she resurrect hope for either of them?

Flo must thrash through these questions alone; her dear friend and confidant has just died. Then, as she's grappling with grief and guilt, her dog goes missing, and she takes a long walk to find him. On the surface, this is all that happens: A simple walk through a desert town. Encounters with people who uplift or unsettle her along the way. But for Flo, this journey becomes much more--a personal odyssey, as profound and disorienting as Ulysses'. She remembers an old folktale passed down by her family, about a young woman's mythical journey to find her place in the world. Echoes of this tale play through the current story, and the hunt for Dog turns into a metaphysical search for meaning.

Some readers will remember Flo and Teddy from Strange Attractors, the outstanding collection that critics compared to Chekhov and Flannery O'Connor. As her sequel to the mother-daughter story unfolds, Janice Deal once more reveals the extraordinary depths of unpretentious people. The Blue Door is a radical adventure, both compulsively readable and meditative--a rare combination.

--Janice Deal

Review Quotes

Deal's vibrant novel grapples with the aftereffects of trauma on identity. Flo lives in a small apartment in a desert town, having settled there two years after her daughter, Teddy, was released from juvenile detention. The eccentric Flo, a social worker now working in a grocery store, spends her free time with her dog, called Dog, and tending to her neighbor. She's also grieving after the recent death of a friend and singular ally from the Midwest town where Teddy's crime occurred, as featured in Deal's Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories (2023). When Flo receives a letter from Teddy, now 24, with the news that she's planning a visit, it sends Flo into a spiral of uncertainty made worse by her discovery that Dog is missing. As she sets off in search of Dog and crosses paths with a variety of townspeople, the long walk forces Flo to confront her past, including the fallout from then 14-year-old Teddy's distressing crime, and consider how to move forward. An engaging, briskly told tale of self-discovery, mother-daughter dynamics, and the complicated bonds of unsettling personal truths.

Leah Strauss, BOOKLIST

--Leah Strauss, BOOKLIST "BOOKLIST" (4/1/2025 12:00:00 AM)

Flo is a social worker by training who now works in an upscale grocery store in the American southwest. Her daughter, Teddy, was sentenced to a juvenile detention facility for a violent crime when they were living in northern Illinois; slowly, they are mending the rift that opened between them. Flo feels parental guilt. Teddy is distant. In the meantime, Flo's dog has escaped her apartment, and she is on a day-long journey to find him. As she walks, she is flooded by memory of Teddy as a child, retells (and amends) the fairy-tale her own mother used to tell to her, and tries to reckon with the recent death of a dear friend who was one of the only people who supported them when Teddy was convicted. Written with emotional depth, The Blue Door is infused with empathy.

--Wendy J. Fox, ELECTRIC LIT ""15 Small Press Books You Should Be Reading This Summer"" (7/4/2025 12:00:00 AM)

The book does not answer all the questions it raises, but that's okay. It wisely illustrates the process of grief--the stumbling in the dark, the importance of small comforts, and finally, almost, letting it go.

--Mary Wisniewski, NEWCITY LIT

"In Janice Deal's mercurial meditation on the power of language and story, one woman's quest for her lost dog through a desert town becomes an epic adventure. With delightful prose and rich characterization Deal renders the quotidian with an acuity that charms these pages to life: walking sticks are wizard staffs, dogs are gods, and blue doors offer passageways to alternate worlds. Yet when ghosts of memory weigh as heavily as the desert heat, how does one find grace, forgiveness, and hope in a world beset with relentless reminders of our past pain? Open The Blue Door to find a way."

--Jeremy T. Wilson

"In The Blue Door, we follow the stalwart Flo on a memorable and, at times, mystical quest for comfort and connection. I was gripped by every step of Flo's journey, but especially her brave willingness to confront the darkness of the past in the hope of emerging on the other side. Never has Janice Deal's writing been deeper or more luminous."

--Katherine Shonk

"It is a mother's challenge to let her child go into the world and find a separate life. But what if that child has committed a savage crime, forcing this separation? 'I am your blind spot, ' Teddy says to her mother, Flo.... Over the space of a day, Flo embarks on a quest to find her dog while meditating on love and forgiveness, on loneliness and connection. In this beautiful short novel, Janice Deal leaves us thunderstruck yet hopeful in the face of despair."

--Jan English Leary

"Janice Deal's The Blue Door is a luminous, soul-stirring novel that blends the mundane and the mythical to explore the weight of guilt, the bonds of love, and the search for meaning in a fractured world.

At the heart of the novel is Flo, a mother navigating grief, regret, and longing as she prepares for a reunion with her estranged and troubled daughter, Teddy. Flo's physical journey throughout the story, to find her missing dog, mirrors an inner pilgrimage, turning a simple walk through a desert town into a profound exploration of the human condition. The people she encounters along the way and her memories--both uplifting and unsettling--add texture to her journey, while the echoes of an old family folktale infuse the narrative with a timeless, almost mythic resonance. With spare and evocative prose, Deal perfectly captures the harsh beauty of the desert landscape and the rich emotional terrain of her protagonist."

--Kate Brandes

"On a long search in the desert to find a runaway canine, Flo reviews her past, especially her relationship to Teddy, her estranged daughter who has written to say she's coming for a visit. How did they get to here? The Blue Door is about finding one's place in the world while life keeps adding up. With her signature grace and merciful eye, Deal sticks a glorious, complicated landing where next steps beckon."

--James Magruder

"The poetry of this novel delighted me. In transparent, unpretentious prose, Janice Deal taps the visceral peril of parenthood--how the role of Mother envelops and entraps the former self, how a creator is enmeshed with her creation--from this side of a beckoning blue door that opens onto an alternate life."

--Elizabeth Mosier

"The Blue Door follows Flo, the mother of a deeply-troubled daughter, on a one-day odyssey through the alien landscapes of her new hometown. Flo's humility and quiet courage, not to mention her capacity for endurance, make for a thrilling read. As she propels herself through the bright, parched desert city, her story, both past and future, takes on the shimmer of a truly magical spiritual journey. Charles Baxter once said, 'You must love your characters, and visit trouble upon them, ' and Janice Deal does exactly that, with pitch-perfect tenderness, humor and clarity. Flo is unforgettable, and the climax of the story is both surprising and inevitable. A beauty of a novel."

--Marjorie Sandor

"The Blue Door weaves together past, present, future with a potent fairy tale ... to create a luminous story that is heartbreaking, full of heart, and unforgettable."

--Lynn Sloan

"This seemingly simple story of a woman trying to come to terms with her daughter's horrendous crime turns into an otherworldly reflection on how to be in the world and what matters--and it is deeply moving and marvelous in every sense of the word."

--Ellen Akins

"When you step through The Blue Door, Janice Deal invites you into a world both ordinary and extraordinary, where magic weaves through the fabric of daily life. At its heart is Flo, a wandering spirit and unconventional seeker, whose quest to unravel a shattering family tragedy leaves her estranged, misunderstood, yet fiercely resilient.... Deal masterfully blends the mundane with the mythical, creating a tale that lingers long after the final page."

--Julie E. Justicz