Customer Reviews

Evening Ferry

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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.

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.

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.

This is a wonderful book. The story is one that will keep you interested.