Customer Reviews

Dead Low Tide Signed Edition

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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.

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