‘Sleeping Giants’ novelist Rene Denfeld explores the harm done in the name of helping

In the dramatic opening pages of Rene Denfeld’s new novel “Sleeping Giants,” a distraught boy, who has escaped from a nearby center for disturbed youths, runs headlong into the freezing surf off Oregon’s rough coast. Denfeld writes, “…the sea grabbed the boy and pulled him down under the surface, into a watery paradise of sparkling blue and rushing currents.

“His body was never found.”

What could drive a 9-year-old to such a desperate act?

So begins this twisting, haunting and surprising thriller written in what readers of Denfeld’s other novels  – “The Butterfly Girl,” “The Child Finder” and “The Enchanted” – will recognize as her signature style: A propulsive whodunit infused with thought-provoking themes about social justice, economic disparity and the harm society often inflicts on its most vulnerable – children.

For the light she has repeatedly shone on these issues through her work, Denfeld received the 2017 Breaking the Silence Award in Washington, DC and was named a Hero of the Year by the New York Times.

You don’t need to scratch very far under the surface to discover that these issues are personal to Denfeld: She’s not only a bestselling author but is also a public defense investigator in Portland, Oregon, the same place she was raised in poverty and experienced homelessness at age 15.

She’s also the adopted mother to three children from the foster system. The experiences of one of her children inspired the events of “Sleeping Giants,” specifically the use of a supposed therapeutic technique used on children with autism, and other diagnoses, called “holding time.” It’s a process of restraining that includes using blankets or rugs and lying on top of upset children in order to subdue them.

“It’s a real treatment that’s been used against untold numbers of children – mostly children in foster care, and also children who have been adopted. Some of the most powerless children,” Denfeld explained via Zoom from Oregon, where she was fitting in an interview amid moving boxes in her new home.

“This physical and psychological coercion is designed to completely destroy and dismantle a child’s psychological barriers and reduce them to this place of being very tractable and impressionable. There’s absolutely no science behind it as far as it being effective. It’s just extremely draconian,” she said. “It’s physical and psychological torture, basically. It’s coercive. It’s annihilating. And it’s dangerous. There have been at least six children who have been assumed to have been suffocated and died as a result. And yet it’s still used today.”

The complex villain of “Sleeping Giants” is a character called Martha King, who runs a center for disturbed children in the novel. As Denfeld explains in the book’s acknowledgments, “The character of Martha King represents many people I’ve met in my work who believe they are doing the right thing, even as they commit the worst harms.”

Like any good story that sticks with you, “Sleeping Giants” is also a subtle invitation for readers to reflect on ourselves, and our own actions.

“I mean, how many times, collectively as a society or individually, do we do things we’re absolutely convinced is the right thing, and it turns out to be immensely harmful?” Denfeld said. “Just look at the history of mankind – slavery, the Holocaust, mental health treatment, draconian punishments, mass incarceration… .”

But this novel is not merely a descent into the worst of human cruelty; there is also a heartening, hopeful arc of the story, featuring empathetic main characters like retired cop Larry Palmer and Amanda Dufresne, a young woman who discovers that the boy who ran into the surf was her brother, and who goes on a mission to find out about his life.

Deepening the emotional stakes of the story is that Larry is beset by grief over the death of his wife – the opposite of the hard-boiled detective cliche – and Amanda is neurodivergent, a fact she comes to understand through the course of the story’s events.

“To my knowledge, she’s actually the first hero character that’s been written about that has her particular set of neurodivergent differences. And for me, that felt very special,” Denfeld said. “I didn’t want that to be, like, her defining characteristic. But it was very important for me to have this hero character who’s not, you know, the genius psychic investigator. She’s a regular person who has her own challenges – and yet she’s out there trying to do the brave thing.”

Throughout “Sleeping Giants” a careful reader might note the appearance of animals in the story – Amanda is a zookeeper who cares for a lonely polar bear, and there are rabbits, and horses who play a role in the story, all of which seem to mirror the vulnerability of the innocent.

But it never feels as if Denfeld is writing to send a message or lecturing – readers get to put the pieces together to find the deeper meaning of the story.

“I build the story, or rather, I let the story build itself as I write. And these things then come out in the story. For me, that works. It’s a way to avoid also creating a story that feels false or manipulative to people. These themes kind of just come out when I’m writing – I’m not even aware of them,” she said. “In writing, sometimes, we tap into a higher form of wisdom.”

Hear more of Denfeld’s wisdom when she talks live on the free virtual program Bookish on Friday, April 19 at 5 pm PST. Author Steve Almond will also be featured. Register here for Bookish.