No Time to Wave Goodbye: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Jacquelyn Mitchard (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 15, 2009

New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard captured the heart of a nation with The Deep End of the Ocean, her celebrated debut novel about mother Beth Cappadora, a child kidnapped, a family in crisis. Now, in No Time to Wave Goodbye, the unforgettable Cappadoras are in peril once again, forced to confront an unimaginable evil.

It has been twenty-two years since Beth Cappadora’s three-year-old son Ben was abducted. By some miracle, he returned nine years later, and the family began to pick up the pieces of their lives. But their peace has always been fragile: Ben returned from the deep end as another child and has never felt entirely at ease with the family he was born into. Now the Cappadora children are grown: Ben is married with a baby girl, Kerry is studying to be an opera singer, and Vincent has emerged from his troubled adolescence as a fledgling filmmaker.

The subject of Vincent’s new documentary, “No Time to Wave Goodbye,” shakes Vincent’s unsuspecting family to the core; it focuses on five families caught in the tortuous web of never knowing the fate of their abducted children. Though Beth tries to stave off the torrent of buried emotions, she is left wondering if she and her family are fated to relive the past forever.

The film earns tremendous acclaim, but just as the Cappadoras are about to celebrate the culmination of Vincent’s artistic success, what Beth fears the most occurs, and the Cappadoras are cast back into the past, revisiting the worst moment of their lives–with only hours to find the truth that can save a life. High in a rugged California mountain range, their rescue becomes a desperate struggle for survival.

No Time to Wave Goodbye is Jacquelyn Mitchard at her best, a spellbinding novel about family loyalty, and love pushed to the limits of endurance.


From the Hardcover edition.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard captured the heart of a nation with The Deep End of the Ocean, her celebrated debut novel about mother Beth Cappadora, a child kidnapped, a family in crisis. Now, in No Time to Wave Goodbye, the unforgettable Cappadoras are in peril once again, forced to confront an unimaginable evil.

It has been twenty-two years since Beth Cappadora’s three-year-old son Ben was abducted. By some miracle, he returned nine years later, and the family began to pick up the pieces of their lives. But their peace has always been fragile: Ben returned from the deep end as another child and has never felt entirely at ease with the family he was born into. Now the Cappadora children are grown: Ben is married with a baby girl, Kerry is studying to be an opera singer, and Vincent has emerged from his troubled adolescence as a fledgling filmmaker.

The subject of Vincent’s new documentary, “No Time to Wave Goodbye,” shakes Vincent’s unsuspecting family to the core; it focuses on five families caught in the tortuous web of never knowing the fate of their abducted children. Though Beth tries to stave off the torrent of buried emotions, she is left wondering if she and her family are fated to relive the past forever.

The film earns tremendous acclaim, but just as the Cappadoras are about to celebrate the culmination of Vincent’s artistic success, what Beth fears the most occurs, and the Cappadoras are cast back into the past, revisiting the worst moment of their lives—with only hours to find the truth that can save a life. High in a rugged California mountain range, their rescue becomes a desperate struggle for survival.

No Time to Wave Goodbye is Jacquelyn Mitchard at her best, a spellbinding novel about family loyalty, and love pushed to the limits of endurance.

---

An Essay by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Motherhood—The Sequel

How I grieved when my three older sons—“gen one” of my seven children—began to achieve young manhood. Every inch they grew made me shrink a little inside. The older they got, the less they would need me. I’d lost the sweet confidences, heartfelt hugs and even unruly tears of the little boys I’d known as a first-time mom. And I thought I had lost my sons.

How wrong I was.

Sure, I still miss those first little boys (although my youngest children today are little boys, too, just three and five). I still miss my effortless size six jeans, too. I haven’t seen them since.

But the way I feel about my older sons took me completely by surprise—as does the way they feel about me.

Like my character Beth Cappadora in No Time To Wave Goodbye, I thought motherhood was time-limited, a vocation that required gear, mittens with zippers, and car seats and bags of Cheerios. When I put away childish things, I felt, just as Beth did, that I’d outlived my usefulness to growing guys. I was just a sweet-and-sour relic of their past and. While I was anything but “finished” with them, they were more than finished with me. But that turned out to be only adolescence.

As they grew older, I learned that they needed their mother differently, but equally urgently, as they did when they needed me to hold their spoons.

It’s against me that they practice the beliefs I tried to instill (the ones they now praise as genuinely as they previously rejected them). It’s with me that they offer a more quaint and tender courtship than they give their girlfriends—only the flowers on the bedside table are roses instead of dandelions.

I never imagined the bond I would feel when I heard Marty, 19, sing on a stage in front of 500 people—and saw him search the crowd for my face. I never anticipated the thrill of accompanying my 22-year-old chef-in-training to dinner and listening with quiet pride as he ordered for both of us. I marvel as my Rob, 25, (a fiercely indifferent high school student) now worries every college grade to an A—then turns to me for approval.

And so the “sequel” to my biggest bestselling novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, is more than a tale of a family tested beyond the limits of endurance, twice in a lifetime. It’s a story that reflects so much of what I’ve learned in 13 intervening years since the book was published. Love that changes isn’t love lost; just as mist and ice are only water in another form, equally lovely.

Beth Cappadora learns more than how tough she really is in her sons’ time of agony in No Time To Wave Goodbye. She learns that she’s still a mother and she still matters.

And so did I. —Jacquelyn Mitchard

(Photo © Liane R. Harrison)

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Mitchard returns to the Cappadoras from The Deep End of the Ocean (Oprah's first book club pick), proving that, sometimes, sequels work. In this harrowing outing, set 13 years after the events of Ocean, the oldest Cappadora son, Vincent, 29, has become a filmmaker, and with the help of his brother, Ben (who was kidnapped in the first book), and sister, Kerry, makes a documentary about child abduction. When the film is nominated for an Academy Award, the family is pushed into the scrutinizing eye of the public, and then tragedy strikes with the disappearance of Ben's daughter, plunging the family into a riveting ordeal that takes them from Hollywood to a grim, middle-of-nowhere confrontation. Along the way, family bonds are stretched to the breaking point, and Mitchard charts a tormented family dynamic with shocking ease. This action-packed and emotionally rich drama is every bit as satisfying as its predecessor. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 228 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (September 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140006774X
• ISBN-13: 978-1400067749
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #919,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jacquelyn Mitchard was born in Chicago. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was published in 1996, becoming the first selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club and a number one New York Times bestseller. Eight other novels, four children's books and six young adult novels followed, including The Midnight Twins, Still Summer, All We Know of Heaven, and The Breakdown Lane. A former daily newspaper reporter, Mitchard now is a contributing editor for Parade Magazine, and frequently writes for such publications as More magazine and Real Simple. Her essays and short stories have been widely anthologized. An adjunct professor in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Fairfield University, she lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their nine children

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Really disappointing October 23, 2009

By Allynn T

Format:Hardcover

Terrible book, just terrible. And I loved "Deep End of the Ocean".

Mitchard has an enormous cast of characters, all of whom are razon-thin in their character development. You'll be lost if you haven't read "Deep End", as the returning cast is introduced with the sketchiest of background. Then again, you'll be lost if you HAVE read "Deep End", as all the new characters are thrown at the reader fast and furiously and in the most superficial manner possible.

There are several confusing scenes in the book, made more confusing by the "Beth and Pat and Candy and Ben and Charley Seven did this....Vincent and Sam and Eliza and George did that" writing. The pre-Oscar hotel scenes and celebrity spotting - waste of time and paper. The actual kidnapping? Also poorly sequenced and explained. The ridiculous search into the mountains for a villain with a muddled motive and Vincent's idiotic leaving shelter (to do what? and why?) are the stuff of slapped-together made-for-TV movies. It wasn't even suspenseful, since I had no emotional attachment to any of the characters. What if the kidnapped child disappears forever? Ho-hum. What if Ben falls into a crevasse? Yawn, too bad, so sad.

"Deep End" was beautifully written and well paced. "No Time" felt slapped together, poorly plotted and added nothing at all to the Cappadora story. Bad, bad book.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the wait! September 15, 2009

By Chelsea Mcguire

Format:Hardcover

Jacquelyn Mitchard's latest, "No Time to Wave Good-bye," is a work nearly thirteen years in the making, much to the chagrin of her anxious fans. Needless to say, any reader will be mesmerized from the start, transfixed by a combination of well developed characters, an established story line, and truly beautiful prose.

The sequel to "The Deep End of the Ocean" invites readers back into the lives of the Cappadora family, who have all grown considerably since the last time they entered our heads and our hearts, and have all dealt with the kidnapping and subsequent return of Ben in their own ways, for better or worse. These characters truly feel like old friends to anyone who has read the preceding novel, yet are strong enough to stand alone in this work of fiction.

The familiarity of the characters and setting of this work may be what draw readers in, as surely they want to find out whatever happened to this endearing family. However, the true lure of this book soon proves to be the sheer suspense of the often unexpected triumphs and tragedies that stay present in ones thoughts long after they have read the last page.

Though the Cappadora family exists solely in the imagination of Mitchard and her devoted fans, the characters become almost real as they give readers true cause for frustration, celebration, and mourning alike. This unique tale is unable to be categorized, and exists as a poignant and suspenseful examination of the limits of the human spirit.

This novel, like it's characters, is not perfect. However, it's beautifully displayed instances of raw human emotion are true to form, and readers will surely be able to see themselves in the thoughts and actions portrayed by a family continually doing the best that they can.

The optimal reading of "No Time to Wave Good-bye" will be done with a copy of "The Deep End of the Ocean" close by, as devoted readers will surely want to flip between the two. Once finished, close the book and open it again- the second reading is every bit as sweet as the first.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Confused and Disappointed. October 9, 2009

By Cecelia Connors

Format:Hardcover

I had read Deep End of the Ocean years ago and was thrilled to see that the sequel had been written. What a disappointment once I started reading it. This was one of the most confusing books I've read all summer. She must have introduced 35 people before I got to the third chapter. Way too many characters to keep them straight! I could not even finish it which is extremely rare for me!