To Catch a Storm, by Mindy Mejia starts off with Eve, a physicist college professor who studies extreme weather, piloting her research jet through a storm over Iowa. As soon as she lands, she finds that her husband is missing and that his car has been found burning in the middle of the intense rainstorm she just flew through. Where is he, and how did his car catch fire in the rain? The police can’t answer either question, but they look at her as a suspect because her husband, Matthew, also a professor, was suspended due to a suspected affair with a student. The first chapter is written in the first person. You’re seeing things from Eve’s point of view.
The book then shifts to an acid trip of a chapter about someone dreaming of dead bodies in a drainpipe. I couldn’t imagine what was happening, until I turned back a few pages and realized that each chapter starts with the name of the character telling the story. Mejia has written a book with no fewer than three first person narratives going on at the same time. We see the mystery unfold through the eyes of Eve, as well as Jonah, a psychic private investigator, and Max, a police detective. Max had been Jonah’s best friend and informal investigative partner until things went sideways and Max got shot. He’s just back from rehab and everyone on the force thinks he’s crazy for trusting his psychic best friend.
Once you’ve sorted out who is who and gotten into the three separate points of view on the same story, the book gets going at a decent clip. The suspense is good, and Mejia does a good job of developing a mystery. Eve and Jonah don’t meet cute, because, after all, a physicist and a psychic are polar opposites. She’s all about evidence, data, and analysis. He uses dreams to steer his investigations. Friction ensues, until she starts to realize that maybe data isn’t everything. They team up to find Matthew.
Jonah is interested in Matthew because he has visions that Matthew is in the same place as a girl he’s been searching for. I don’t want to get too far into that part of the story, because it’s spoiler territory. All I’ll say is that Mejia has created a compelling backstory that pushes the plot forward.
Max’s perspective adds more backstory to Jonah’s talents and personality. He’s trying to figure out what happened to Matthew, as well as to another murder victim he’s been assigned to investigate. He feels it all ties together, but he isn’t sure how.
Meanwhile, a huge ice storm has blanketed the area, making travel nearly impossible and complicating the already impossible task of locating Matthew. Some of this feels like an MFA writing professor exhorting the novelist to “raise the stakes” in the plot. It’s not just that Eve and Jonah have to find this needle in a haystack while their lives are being threatened… they have do to it in an ice storm where their car can crash at any second! It’s a little much. Plus, Eve’s motivation for finding her husband is a little hard to parse. He seems like a class-A jerk, but she still loves him and is worried that he’s been hurt.
It all more or less works, anyway. The triple first person narrative, the mystery, the suspense—you are definitely turning pages. Mejia is good at characterization. Everyone has something to offer. It’s a good read.