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Published Nov 2010
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma--streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast. Can you ever really save another person? Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off track, and for the first time in their ordered existence together, Webster fears for her future. His work shows him daily every danger the world contains, how wrong everything can go in a second. All the love a father can give a daughter is suddenly not enough. Sheila's sudden return may be a godsend - or it may be exactly the wrong moment for a lifetime of questions and anger and longing to surface anew. What tore a young family apart? Is there even worse damage ahead? The questions lifted up in Anita Shreve's utterly enthralling new novel are deep and lasting, and this is a novel that could only have been written by a master of the human heart.
"The prolific Shreve brings her customary care to this thoroughly absorbing, perfectly paced domestic drama." - Booklist
"[S]mooth if unsurprising latest...the story runs like a well-oiled machine and should sate the author's fans." - Publishers Weekly
"[A] solid read, though not the author's most compelling or dazzling work. Excellent fodder for book clubs; there is plenty to discuss in the protagonists' motivations, decisions, and characterization." - Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. Her approimately 20 novels include The Pilot's Wife, The Weight of
Water, Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, and Resistance.
Anita Shreve began writing fiction while working as a high school teacher after graduating from Tufts University.
Although one of her first published stories, "Past the Island,
Drifting," was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1975, Shreve felt she couldn't
make a living as a fiction writer so she became a journalist. She traveled to
Africa and spent three years in Kenya, writing articles that appeared in
magazines such as Quest, US, and Newsweek. Back in the United
States, she turned to raising her children and writing freelance articles for
magazines. Shreve later expanded two of these ...
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