Review: Wow...heartfelt without a trace of sappiness
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 17, 2014
Ben is on the run from...well we don't know what until the very end. He is an educated man, a painter, who walks out of his comfortable California life and drives until he runs out of road in rural, coastal Maine. Not ready or willing to turn around and go back, he finds a "guest cottage" with a local family and takes the a job completely unsuited to his training and talents: baiting, repairing, and hauling lobster pots.Smoot is a ten year old who is parenting her mother. From the beginning, all we know is that her mother is incapable of coping with any part of her life. There was a before, we get some hints of a happy family somewhere else, but now there is only endlessly tiptoeing around. Smoot must keep everything running so that no one finds out and takes her away.Rose is an odd duck teacher whose worldliness is a cover for a long ago mistake that she wants to fix but won't. Thirty years ago, she made an impulsive choice that she thought could be undone. She has spent those 30 years going place to place, using her exotic travel and consciously weird food choices to set - and keep - herself apart from anyone who might get close. She has come to this part of Maine to try to fix her mistake.All these characters are outsiders who ended up in rural coastal Maine. They live around the edges of a community where everyone is from there and no one moves there. They are at different stages of the same tragedy - falling apart and not having the will or strength or permission to move on.I cannot tell you what a joy it is to read a book with such carefully, fully developed characters. Wonderful, wonderful. As the book ended, I really felt invested in these characters and wanted them to live happily ever after.READ THIS BOOK!