Dead Low Tide: A Novel [Hardcover]

Bret Lott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2012

In this long-awaited sequel to The Hunt Club, set in the swampy South Carolina Lowcountry, New York Times bestselling author Bret Lott returns with a literary page-turner about murder and family secrets. Though Dead Low Tide continues the story of Huger Dillard, this haunting work of fiction brilliantly stands on its own. No longer a teenager and now a young man, Huger must come to terms with and confront the truth about his community, his past, and the mysterious place he calls home.

While most of the residents in the wealthy, historic Charleston enclave of Landgrave Hall are asleep at two-thirty in the morning, Huger Dillard and his father, “Unc,” are heading, via jonboat, to the adjoining golf course. Blinded by a terrible accident that killed his wife, Unc prefers to practice his golf game when no one is watching. But before anyone can even tee off, Huger makes a grisly find: a woman’s body, anchored deep in the mud at the water’s low tide.

The discovery sets off a chain of events that puts Huger and his family up against secret military forces, old friends, longtime neighbors, lost loves, and shadowy global networks. The only thing connecting them all is Landgrave Hall—and the treacherous reason why this area is so important to so many people.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Advance praise for Dead Low Tide

“[A] critique of class distinctions and outmoded laws… [with a] particular noirish kick."--The New York Times Book Review
 
“The best book Bret Lott has ever written—by far. He creates a Charleston that has never been written about in the history of that remarkable city. It is a literary thriller of the highest order—like something John Le Carré would write. I couldn’t put it down.”—Pat Conroy, author of South of Broad
 
“Dead Low Tide should be retitled High Water Mark. Bret Lott is a combination of James Lee Burke and Elmore Leonard but with the grace and poise of Pat Conroy. Not a word is out of place. Reading this book is like listening to good music—as you reach the end, you want to start all over again. Dead Low Tide has made me a Bret Lott lifer. I’m going back and reading everything he’s written, and I’ll be first in line when the next comes out.”—Ridley Pearson, author of In Harm’s Way
 
“Bret Lott has done it again: linked a small family drama to a matter of national importance. Though he tells his tale, as always, with a lyric sweetness, terror—both private and public—is the subject here.”—Nicholas Delbanco, author of Lastingness: The Art of Old Age

"This literary thriller of the first order grippingly deals with current events while revealing the secrets, ambitions, loves, and fears of a family that readers grow to cherish."--Library Journal
 
Praise for Bret Lott’s The Hunt Club
 
“I turned the pages so insistently that, had there been pictures on the pages instead of print, it would have made a movie. It’s that suspenseful.”—Wally Lamb
 
“A nerve-jangling thriller.”—Boston Sunday Globe

About the Author

Bret Lott is the author of the novels Ancient Highway, A Song I Knew by Heart, Jewel (an Oprah’s Book Club selection), The Hunt Club, Reed’s Beach, A Stranger’s House, and The Man Who Owned Vermont; and the story collections A Dream of Old Leaves, How to Get Home, and The Difference Between Women and Men; the memoir Fathers, Sons, and Brothers; and the writing guide Before We Get Started. Formerly editor of The Southern Review, he was appointed to the National Council on the Arts in 2006. Bret Lott lives with his wife, Melanie, in Hanahan, South Carolina.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Random House (January 17, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400063752
• ISBN-13: 978-1400063758
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bret Lott is the author of thirteen books, most recently the novel Dead Low Tide(Random House 2008); other books include the story collection The Difference Between Women and Men, the nonfiction book Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer's Life, and the bestselling novels Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and A Song I Knew by Heart. His work has appeared in, among other places, The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review and in dozens of anthologies. Born in Los Angeles, he received his BA in English from Cal State Long Beach in 1981, and his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984, where he studied under James Baldwin. From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching. His honors include having been named Fulbright Senior American Scholar and writer-in-residence to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel; having spoken on Flannery O'Connor at The White House; and being appointed a member of the National Council on the Arts. He and his wife, Melanie, and live in Hanahan, South Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars (4.5 stars) "This was the end of my life, I knew. This was the end of my life.", January 17, 2012

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead Low Tide: A Novel (Hardcover)

Lott possesses the true storyteller's gift: familiarity of character, the universality of flawed humanity and the inevitability of the unknown. Lott's hook is sunk in the first chapter with sympathetic protagonist Huger Dillard's harrowing discovery of a body in the water bordering Landgrave Hall, one of the original South Carolina Lowcountry, a landscape dotted with the "cottages" of the region's heirs. Gliding quietly in a jon boat with his blind father, Unc, to the property's pristine golf course in the middle of the night (there's a whole other story in this relationship), Unc's pole makes contact with a submerged body in a shallow finger of the creek.

What follows is a circus of competing jurisdictions, local law enforcement, state police and two rigid representatives of the Naval Weapons Station across the marsh from Landgrave Hall, an escalating verbal standoff between Unc and the Navy personnel only diffused by the arrival of an officer of the department of Natural Resources. In a drama weighted with contemporary realities- a crumbling real estate market, the encroachment of civilization (undesirables), terrorism and increased military presence- the shadows of history loom equally large, battle between Indians and settlers, North and South, the recovered body "yet more history being poured out on these grounds that has known so much of it." The world has changed in ways even the most prescient could not have anticipated, Huger and Unc on the cusp of trouble foreign to their way of life.

In psychic limbo since a violent event, Huger resides with his mother and Unc in one of the coveted cottages, the dead body awakening old and yet unresolved feelings, father and son plunged into a surreal landscape where everything is at risk, the family clinging to one another in an unfolding nightmare belied by the natural beauty around them. Lott builds a taut novel with unerring precision, characters- good and bad- falling into place in a series of events with no waste of dialog or activity, moving toward an unexpected reckoning. Subversively bucolic and limned with the nostalgia of history, Lott seduces with a hint of menace that grows more harrowing by the page. Luan Gaines/2012.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars entertaining second chance at life, January 17, 2012

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead Low Tide: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ten years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, then teenager Huger Dillard killed a man (see The Hunt Club). He remains traumatized as he suffers from PTSD leading to his dropping out of college and still living at the family home Landgrave Hall; his teenage girlfriend Tabitha Gaillard moved on with her life as she attends Stanford as a doctorate student.

At two in the morning in spite of the golf course being closed, Huger caddies for his blind father Unc. They arrive by boat, but finding the corpse of a woman ends their time on the links before it begins. Suddenly the marsh is loaded with activity as the cops and U.S. Naval Weapons Station operative arrive. When Huger returns home, he finds Naval Commander Prendergast with his mother. Meanwhile a dead male is found in the trunk of a car. Needing to know shat is going on while wondering if his family is in peril, Huger snaps out of his doldrums to investigate the truth.

This is an entertaining second chance at life (if you live long enough) tale. The story line is at its best when the focus is on Huger still shut down after a decade has passed since his previous harrowing experience. When the story line turns into a standard thriller, Dead Low Tide loses some of its fascination as this seems out of character for this sitting on the sidelines couch potato. Still fans will enjoy Huger's second coming if he survives his latest ordeal.

Harriet Klausner