Evening Ferry [Hardcover]

Katherine Towler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 11, 2005

Following on from the success of Snow Island, Katherine Towler returns to the fictional island with the second installment of this trilogy.

Thirty-two year old Rachel Shattuck has not returned to Snow Island since she attended her motherÂ’s funeral. A year later, in the summer of 1965, she remains frightened of what she will confront at home: her motherÂ’s absence, her fatherÂ’s stern nature, and the unrealized promise of her own life now that she is divorced.

When she returns to Snow Island to care for her father after he is injured in an accident, she discovers her motherÂ’s diaries, hidden in the house where she died a year earlier. What Rachel learns through reading her motherÂ’s diary and becoming an islander once again reveals the truth about her familyÂ’s history and sets her own troubled life on a new course.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The second volume of Towler's trilogy (after Snow Island) continues the story of a small and isolated New England island, picking up over 20 years after the end of the first book, in 1965. At 33, Rachel Shattuck, a recent divorcée and schoolteacher who grew up on Snow, has lived most of her adult life on the mainland. When her widowed father, Nate, has an accident, Rachel returns home for the first time since her mother's funeral the year before. Frustrated by the island's persistent insularity—despite the specter of the Vietnam War—Rachel's perspective begins to shift when she finds her mother's diaries from the 1930s and '40s. She reads of her mother's disgruntlement during the early years of her marriage, the constant money struggles, the often harsh conditions on Snow and her increasing immersion in the Catholic Church. As Rachel better comprehends her family history, she also realizes that perhaps her home is on the island after all. As with the first installment, Towler succeeds in bringing the small island community to vivid life, and the introspective characters are sympathetic. Though the novel lacks a sense of urgency, it is gracefully written, and the subtleties of family life should keep readers interested in the continuing saga. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

After escaping Snow Island and a girlhood of disappointment, divorced Rachel returns to care for her recently injured and widowed father, Nate. Sorely missing her mother, Rachel makes tentative reconnections to the isolated island folk and her own memories. In an effort to reach out to her, curmudgeonly Nate leaves his wife's secret diaries for Rachel to find. Soon Rachel discovers her mother's unhappiness in an unforgiving climate, the secret correspondence Phoebe has with a priest, and the truth behind the institutionalization of Rachel's youngest brother. There are two stories unfolding: Rachel's, as she slowly readapts to the island as its one-room-schoolhouse teacher, and her mother, Phoebe's, as she also adjusts to the remote and harsh living the New England island demands. The unhurried pace, simple and recognizable characters, and lyrical descriptions will draw readers into this Vietnam War-era novel, but astute readers will be one step ahead of the plot twists and may be disappointed with choices made by Rachel and other characters. Kaite Mediatore
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 372 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage; 1st edition (July 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596921242
• ISBN-13: 978-1596921245
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,569,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars satisfying, wise novel, August 9, 2005

By 

M. Soto-Schwartz "English Professor" (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evening Ferry (Hardcover)

Where Towler's first novel, Snow Island, covered a young woman's coming of age during World War II, the second in her triology about an island off the coast of Rhode Island, set during the Vietnam war, traverses the complex path of adult relationships--with spouses, parents, and friends. There are some extraordinarily insightful portrayals of the marriages of both the protagonist and her parents, portrayals that reveal both characters and author to have matured considerably since Towler's impressive debut. There is great wisdom and truth in this novel, as well as multi-dimensional, fully realized characters I had a hard time leaving when the book concluded. As in the first novel, the powerfully evoked island setting plays a significant role, but in Evening Ferry setting takes more of a back seat to the richly textured interplay between past and present, husbands and wives, parents and children. Readers of Snow Island will be pleased to find updates on the main characters in that novel, but Towler is telling a dramatically different story here, a tale that left this reader both fully satisfied and eager to see the direction she will head off in next.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Part Two of a generational saga, July 5, 2005

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evening Ferry (Hardcover)

Evening Ferry is set in Rhode Island in the summer of 1965, as thirty-three-year old school teacher Rachel Shattuck returns to Snow Island to care for her father who has been injured in an accident. Rachel's mother died a year earlier and she is still haunted by visions of Phoebe, memories too fresh to ignore. Back on the island, Rachel relives her strict Catholic upbringing, resenting an overbearing father and a childhood of obligations to siblings. The divorced Rachel is torn, worried that her marriage breakup contributed to her mother's fatal heart attack.

The island is filled with the past, assailing her wherever she turns, but when Rachel begins reading her mother's diaries, begun in 1930, she views Phoebe Shattuck in a different light, a young woman with dreams and aspirations much the same as her own. In the parts of the novel devoted to Phoebe's years with Nate, their marriage and the birth of their children, the writing achieves more authenticity, the characters more fully fleshed and believable. This is the heart of the novel, as Phoebe's life takes shape, the disappointments and rewards of the years on the island.

The author captures the spirit of Phoebe's compulsive rush into marriage and the realities she faces, disclosing her secrets and uncertainties. Religion is significant in Phoebe's struggle to be a good wife, prayer often her only solace. Rachel has received this legacy as well, her faith deeply ingrained, riddled with the guilt she has carried since childhood. The lessons from mother to daughter are poignant, brought to life on the handwritten pages where Phoebe pours out her heart, an invaluable gift to a young woman who desperately longs for a mother's comfort.

Phoebe's scathing honesty reveals a conflicted woman faced with impossible choices, her diaries attesting to the contradictions that are her reality. The diaries are shocking, but ultimately palliative to a young woman who has blamed her father for most of the disappointments she remembers. The answer lies in the acceptance of both parents, each with flaws; but first Rachel must accept her own humanity, taking advantage of opportunities to make peace with the past, embracing the future.

Evening Ferry is the familiar Americana of forty years ago, soon after the Civil Rights Movement and at the beginning of the Vietnam War. Reading this novel is like watching an early Technicolor movie, the scenes a little too well-staged, the protagonist striving to carve out a niche of personal identity, although Rachel carries her individuality like a burden. The island is entrenched in old habits, stubbornly rejecting change, which will probably be the focus of the next volume of the Shattuck family saga. This is part two of a trilogy and sets the stage for Rachel Shattuck's continuing coming-of-age and a country deeply divided by the Vietnam conflict, Evening Ferry the calm before the storm. Luan Gaines/2005.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evening Ferry, August 8, 2005

By 

J. Phelan "summer reader" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evening Ferry (Hardcover)

Having devoured the first book in this trilogy, Snow Island, I waited with great anticipation for the second installment about life on Snow. Towler does not disappoint. Evening Ferry is a beautifully written tale about love, the bonds of family, and the secrets that live within and around us all. As with the first book, I was desperate to read past the final page, and now can only wait (with great anticipation) to return to the Island one last time.