Customer Reviews

Between The Tides

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Between the Tides is my first novel by Patti Callahan Henry--and it won't be the last. I intend to devour them all. Her novels are `real life' stories with fully developed characters with problems experienced by many of us at one time or another. Her prose is lyrical and so vivid you actually visualize her settings and can smell the air and sea of the low country of South Carolina. I found myself rereading passages because they were so beautiful or because I found them profound in their simplicity.

Catherine Leary's father died and his last request was that his ashes be scattered in the Seaboro River in South Carolina. The last place Catherine wants to visit is her hometown and the Seaboro River. At age twelve her life changed following an accident she has always felt responsible for--and she doesn't want to revisit the intense pain.

Forrest Anderson, Catherine's former boyfriend and friend of her professor father, is writing a tribute to Catherine's father. To get a better feel of him and his life, Forrest intends to travel to Seaboro. Catherine doesn't want Forrest to expose her personal tragedy and accompanies him to her hometown in order to control his information.

The journey becomes more than Catherine anticipated as she learns things about her family, their friends and herself that she never knew. And along the way she reconnects with the life she loved and left and learns to love and forgive herself and others.

Armchair Interviews says: Highly recommended!

In Seaboro, South Carolina twelve year old Catherine "Cappy" Leary plays with the neighbors especially thirteen year old Boyd Loughlin. That is until Boyd's two year old brother Sam accidentally dies. Cappy blames herself after overhearing Boyd tells his mother she was watching Sam. At that time she did not know it, but her childhood ended; she did believe no good thing will come her way for the negligence death of little Sam.

Nine months have passed since her father died, but Catherine has failed to complete his final request. However, her father's protégé Forrest Anderson informs her he plans to honor her father in a memorial article he is writing. Catherine fears what he will learn in Seaboro so on her thirtieth birthday she returns to Seaboro for the first time since the tragedy that traumatized her. Her goals are to honor her late father by scattering his ashes as he requested and to prevent Forrest from revealing Leary family secrets though deep down in her soul she would not mind making new secrets with him.

BETWEEN THE TIDES is a warm character study of a woman that has spent two-thirds of her life believing her negligence led to the tragic death of infant Sam. and that led her to conclude that she is worthless. Her return to Seaboro to accomplish her two missions provides Cappy with an opportunity for a renewal of her spirit and a second chance to live life to the fullest and not in the shadows. Readers will enjoy this fine tale as the lead protagonist after eighteen years at ebb tide is relearning to enjoy the waves.

Harriet Klausner

It is perhaps the quickest read of this year. I read this in two and half hours. I've read her other books and this one is not as good as her others, but it still provides a delightful read. This book will definitely appeal to the booklover in you, filled with lots of quotes and titles of books that the main character's dad had talked about. It is just perfect to kick off summer vacation with!

This book focuses on Catherine "Cappy" Leary, whose life changed drastically in her twelfth summer in a tragic accident. After the accident, her family uprooted and moved back to her parents' hometown within a very short period of time. Catherine grieved all those years blaming herself for the family move as well as for the tragic accident. She had given up her "second mother," a warm and vibrant woman named Ellie, who was married and had two boys, Boyd and Sam. Catherine had a loving relationship with her father and a distant one with her mother. She had a best friend named Piper and life was just bursting at the seams. Then tragedy hit and it hit hard.

Now that Catherine is thirty years old and an orphan as her father had died nine months previously. In his will, he stated he wanted his ashes scattered over the river in that little South Carolina town that she had grown up in. Returning to the town that she has never forgotten, Catherine meets her past and learned the dark secrets that were her dad's and others'. Even at the age of thirty, it is never too late to grow up. In the process, she realizes the truth about herself and the truth about her father's protege, Forrest, whom she used to date years before she started dating the college basketball recruiter.

The story is choppy in places and the ending is too rushed, but other than that, it provided a wonderful story for a stormy night. It is definitely a quick read and a delightful one.

6/3/08

This is a beautiful must read book. Captures your heart from the onset. I'd recommend it to everyone.

I honestly was a little put off by the ending; I thought it was going to be better, more detailed or complete. I felt like we were left hanging. It was only the very end.

Loved the rest.

This was the first of Henry's novels that I've picked up, but now I can't wait to try her others!

I loved every aspect of this book- from the well-developed characters, to the vivid descriptions of the inner turmoil in dealing with the past and present. Spectacular imagery really made it easy for me to feel that I was right there watching the whole thing.

*slight spoiler below*

Although I did see the "secret" coming for quite awhile, and I thought the explanation for the revelation (eye color, blood type) was a little fantastical, I still very much enjoyed this novel.

I knew nothing of this author before getting this book as a book club choice. I was completely taken in by every aspect of the book. A great read, a perfect choice for a book club or individual reading. She uses wording that paints wonderful pictures in the mind...yet leaves just enough for you to finish the picutre yourself.
I really loved it because it did show how children carry things that happen to them or involving them into adulthood. And how things could have been different had adults realized these things and dealt with them at the time. Yes, things are hard for children to understand, but that is where parents and adults really need to take the time to see things through the childs eyes.

A wonderful book.. I highly encourage you to read it.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I did like it. It was definitely a good read but the author exhausted me with too much drama. A bit too much for my taste. But, I GOT IT!!! Her writing is so wonderfully descriptive and evocative, I could feel Cappy's emotional pain and at times I just felt spent while reading.
The character of Forrest gave Ms Callahan an opportunity to explain how important words are, written or spoken and I loved how she showed how reading can affect and help a person see their own life situation --- something Cassy wouldn't do. This to me was the most important message of the book. The story of how Cappy and the Seaboro family and friends worked out a tragedy in their own way was fascinating, very insightful, poignant, showing the strengths of the human spirit and the love that drives it.

I had read Driftwood Summer before this and maybe it was the wrong book to read of Patti's first. Between the Tides to me was very different, and much better.

It starts off with Catherine, otherwise known as Cappy, Leary saying good-bye to her four year boyfriend as he leaves to go to Alabama on her birthday. Her father has been deceased for nine months and she still has not completed his request of having his ashes spread in the Seaboro River. An old boyfriend, and a good friend and colleague of her father's, winds up talking her into taking him to Seaboro to help her fulfill that request and because he's writing an article on her father and wants to include his past in Seaboro.

Cappy has not been back to Seaboro in eighteen years, not since the accidental drowning of Sam, one of the sons of her family's best friends Ellie and Jim. Cappy's family and Sam's family at points seem like one big family, with Cappy even relating Ellie and her mother as having both helped to raise her. After Sam died, Cappy felt it was her fault, that she was supposed to be watching Sam when he wandered into the river. Her family packed up and moved back to Cedar Valley, supposedly so her father could teach.

Once she gets back into town, she tries to just pour her father's ashes into the river but that doesn't happen. Instead she runs into her old best friend and finds herself in town for three days more than she expected. During that stay, she finds out things still happened in this town that she thought would stay the same. Ellie has Alzheimer's, Jim has died, Boyd, their other son, hates her and her family, and more than anything else, the complete and total truth of her dad and Sam.

I found parts of the book that really tugged at me. And others felt a little rushed and choppy. Though what I found most enjoyable about the books was not the characters, the setting, the heart-pulling moments, was the fact that unlike Driftwood Summer, things didn't go back to everyone being peachy-keen. Cappy reports her boyfriend, an athletic coach, to the board, he breaks up with her, and they don't get back together. However you are still left with the promise of a happy ending.

I always enjoy finding a new writer and Patti Callahan Henry is one that I look forward to her next. This is a quick read with very good character development and a few twists and turns.

This was the first book I've read by Henry and I loved it. She is a truly gifted author and I simply could not put this book down. She developed her main characters so well and with every page I turned I felt anticipation to found out what was next. I can't wait for my "reading" friends to read this book so we can discuss it. This book would be a wonderful book club read. I highly recommend it.