The Blue Door

by Janice Deal

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.

Genres: Fiction

196 pages, Paperback

Published April 22, 2025

About the author

Janice Deal is the author of "The Decline of Pigeons," a collection of short stories from Queen's Ferry Press. Her stories have appeared in literary magazines such as "The Sun," "CutBank," "Ontario Review," "The Carolina Quarterly," "StoryQuarterly," and "New Letters." In 2011, the anthology "New Stories from the Midwest" featured as the lead story Janice's short story "Dinosaurs" (which also appears in "The Decline of Pigeons"). Her collection was a finalist in the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and she is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award for prose. She is currently working on a novel. Find "The Decline of Pigeons" on Goodreads here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17....

Reviews

[Theresa Timlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not at all sure how I came in possession of this book - a signed copy arrived in the mail for me, thanking me for my support of the arts - but I don’t at all remember doing anything which would entitle me to a signed copy of a recently published novel. The publisher is local to Philadelphia, the editor is a friend, and the book is blurbed by a local writer know through my college, but none of that explains why I received the book. Nevertheless, I am so glad I did. On an ordinary day in her desert town, Flo goes out on a walk to find her dog, who escaped from the house when she went to retrieve the mail from the mail carrier. As Flo walks, she reflects on her relationships with her family (in the mail was a letter from her adult daughter announcing a visit), her neighbors, her friends (her closest friend has just died from cancer), her community (a former social worker, she now stocks shelves at a grocery store), and her animals (in addition to the dog, whom she has never named anything but Dog, she has two cats). She also meets people along the way, some helpful, some not so much. Flo’s musings on her life are interspersed with a fairy tale she learned from her mother, who learned it from her Czech mother, where a mother sends her three daughters off to meet their fate and their mates. The book reflects on the nature of motherhood, friendship, guilt, grief, and loneliness and the end result is a lovely, if heart rending tale.

[Alyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is very introspective, using internal monologue to explore the themes of motherhood, guilt, and grief. It has short chapters and the main character’s thoughts sometimes jump from one to the next in quick succession, making this style really effective and true to form, all the while holding the reader’s attention. The narrative also has sort of a dreamlike quality to it that I really liked. It felt very genuine. I don’t have particularly strong feelings about the folktale woven throughout. It was executed well enough but I don’t know that it added anything to the story for me.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting and well-written book. I love stories that center on an older woman protagonist, presented as a realistic, well-rounded person as opposed to a stereotype. This book definitely fits the bill, with Flo coming across as a believable character. She is heroic in an everyday sense of the word -- someone who persists and survives the difficulties of life. She loves animals and she loves her daughter, in spite of their complicated relationship and the fallout from her daughter's crime and punishment. The writing is technically beautiful, weaving together Flo's quest for the missing Dog, the deciphering of her daughter's letter, and a folktale told from mother to daughter which parallels aspects of Flo's own story. It's not a read for anyone wanting a lot of action or plot, but it's engaging as a multi-faceted character sketch that dives deep, unearthing the psychological truths of a woman's life. At times the symbolism is a bit too much "on the nose" -- everything is blue, Flo's daughter is named "Teddy" and her neighbor's child is named "Bear." But despite the occasional irk, I found this a a worthwhile, original story.

[Grace Stafford · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic novel I found through NPR's 2025 Books We Love. Interwoven with folktale and flashbacks, we follow Flo as she treks through a Southwestern city to find her dog, Dog. A novel of grief, guilt, friendship, motherhood, outsiderness, and change that really packed a punch for me.

[Georgette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great read. A lot of themes explored- motherhood, grief, feelings of inadequacy, crises of conscience, and some deep meditative thoughts, too. Overall, a quick read and a good one!