Dead Low Tide Signed Edition [Hardcover]

Bret Lott (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Villard Books (December 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0676586600
• ISBN-13: 978-0676586602
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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

6 of 8 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
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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)    (TOP 1000 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