The Season of Open Water: A Novel [Paperback]

Dawn Tripp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2035

WINNER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
 
October 1927. Bridge Weld is nineteen, headstrong, beautiful, and a petty thief. She is working in her grandfather Noel’s boatbuilding shop when Noel, a hardened seaman, is approached by a local bootlegger to refit a boat for smuggling. He takes the job for the money it offers—and the chance to build a future for Bridge and her brother, Luce. Noel invests his windfall profit in the soaring stock market, but does not count on Luce, a born risk-taker with a ruthless streak, venturing into the violence of the rum-running trade himself. Bridge embarks on a different course: She falls in love with Henry Vonniker, a World War I veteran, and an outsider from a higher social class. Caught up in her passion for Henry, Bridge moves beyond the bounds of her known world, and Luce’s fierce attachment to her spirals out of control. 
 
The Season of Open Water is a mesmerizing tale of love and adventure centered on a blue-collar family forever changed by the lure and corruption of the American Dream.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in a coastal New England town caught up in the Prohibition-era rum-running trade, Tripp's second novel (after Moon Tide) illuminates the period's dark underbelly as it explores a family forever changed by the allure of its precarious prosperity. Written from alternating perspectives, the book opens with a flashback to Noel Dowd's whaling days, nearly 60 years earlier, though the bulk of the story belongs to his willful and fiercely independent grandchildren, Bridge and Luce. The brother and sister share an unusually close relationship, approached only by the bond between Bridge and her grandfather. The siblings' relationship is put to the test as 18-year-old Bridge grows closer to Henry Vonniker, a former doctor shattered by the horrors of World War I, and Luce becomes embroiled with Honey Lyons, a local rum-running kingpin. Meanwhile, Noel, with the help of his former shipmate Rui, invests his entire savings in stocks, oblivious to the impending market collapse and the devastating depression that will sweep the nation. While Tripp's impressive research and attention to detail add to the story's heft, the creeping pace of her narrative can undermine the novel's passion and intensity. However, this restraint allows the reader ample time to savor Tripp's elegantly crafted characters, whose joys, sorrows and humanity far outweigh the excitement of a boat chase or the thrill of a romantic encounter. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

In this story of a three-generation family in the late 1920s in a Massachusetts seacoast town, Tripp proves that she is no one-book wonder after her well-received debut Moon Tide (2003). There the foreboding came from a pending hurricane; here it's human-made, from the stock-market crash and--mostly--from the effects of Prohibition. Widower Noel, once a whaler, now builds boats; his daughter, Cora, a widow, takes in laundry; and her son, Luce, a born risk taker, gives up his ice trade for rum running, enticing his sister, Bridge, to work some jobs with him. The current between Bridge and Henry Vonniker, a doctor so damaged by the world war that he now manages a mill, eventually brings them together, despite differences in age and class, before Bridge joins Luce on one last job. Tripp's spare language is particularly appropriate to this time and place; she finds verbs that etch themselves into a reader's memory--waves "scour" in, light "chaps" the surface of the ocean--and her plot unfolds with both surprises and what seems inevitable. Michele Leber
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (December 31, 2035)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812971477
• ISBN-13: 978-0812971477
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved this finest-kind novel, November 6, 2007

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KatPanama "katpanama" (Readerville) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Season of Open Water: A Novel (Hardcover)

From the reviews here it's apparent folk love or hate this novel. Color me in the love category over and over again, then roll me over for more. This brilliant novel is one of those for which the word "spellbinding" is made -- the story, plot, language, exquisite sense of place and time, exquisite texture, gorgeous weave, and a hefty measure of soul. Read it soon.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking Prose, September 11, 2005

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Priscilla (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Season of Open Water: A Novel (Hardcover)

Tripp has done it again! This time in Westport Point, a place described with such exactness, just as in her first memorable novel, Moon Tide, it's a character in an of itself, we meet three generations of beachside inhabitants, beginning with Noel, a former whaler, who's had to readjust for economic reasons and build boats instead of chase whales. The family becomes entangled in the illegal dealings of the rum trade, during Prohibition and everyone's integrity and definition of a just survival is challenged. In addtion to the aptly evoked historical context, there's an undercurrent of seeking true love despite the constraints of class. Tripp gives the reader a rich,texturted story with characters who linger in the reader's mind long after the last word is read. Can't wait for her next novel!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars riveting historical novel, July 6, 2005

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school of fish (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Season of Open Water: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully written and well researched novel. It is very difficult to write absorbing novels set in historical periods, yet Dawn Tripp has managed to do just that. She brings the period of rum running alive while engaging the reader with the story of Bridge and her love affair with Henry Vonniker, the shell-shocked doctor from a wealthy family. Anyone who knows this area of Massachusetts knows what an accurate depiction this is of a coastal community with long-time families from many different social levels and backgrounds. But what I really find takes this novel up another notch is the rich descriptions of people in the context of what they are doing, whether digging for clams, building boats, escaping in a rum runner from the Coast Guard, planting vegetables or eating dinner at the local Grange. The author also has deep insights into how the difference in social backgrounds affects the love affair of Bridge and Henry. And how economic pressures and the taste of adventure draw locals into the dangerous world of rum running. Not many writers today have this deep sense of place. Too many modern novels are all talk, have cliche characters and do not seem to be rooted in a definite locale. Anyone who likes language, complex characters and history will find it an absorbing read.