Customer Reviews

Water Dreams

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In Water Dreams, Jeanne McDonald has written a touching, unflinchingly honest account of guilt and redemption. Faced with unresolved grief following the death of his father, Miller Sharp finds himself in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Convinced that he can never live up to his father's example, Miller is presented with an opportunity to prove himself when he attempts to save a young man, Jimmy Duane Goodfriend, from drowning. However, when the drowning victim nearly drags Miller down with him, Miller chooses his own life over Jimmy Duane's.

Riddled with guilt, Miller is drawn to Jimmy Duane's young widow, Adra. He sets out to try to make amends to her and her child for what his cowardice has cost her. But as he becomes increasingly entangled in Adra's life, he risks everything--his career, his marriage, and the respect of the son he loves.

McDonald's prose is luminous and her characters ring true on every page. She has an almost uncanny talent for creating sympathy for both her protagonist and the people he wounds. I loved Miller and pulled for him in spite of his flaws. This is an absolutely beautiful novel, one that resonates long after the final sentence. Quite simply, Water Dreams is the best work of fiction I've read this year.

I've read thousands of books and I can honestly say this is one of the best I've ever read. It caught me at the beginning, it flowed beautifully, the ending was perfect. All the characters rang so true, especially Miller. The story showed every weakness, every strength of these characters and made me completely forget that they weren't real people.
As I read the book, I felt everything they were feeling along with them. I felt so sorry for Miller, so angry with Miller, so disgusted with Miller, yet I understood that Miller was a good man. I felt deeply sorry for Katie, and felt her anxiety, fear, bewilderment, depression and pain. I felt disgusted with both of them for their stubborness, but could relate completely. Judd was very much the teenager with his mood swings, outbursts of anger and lack of respect for his parent's marriage bed. And I felt like I knew Adra, until the end...now that was a shocker! I should have seen it coming, but I didn't, and it was Great! This was a real, emotional, exciting, beautiful book and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The story that Jeanne Mcdonald has written is one of the best I have read in a long time.From the first chapter the reader is captured and the story line keeps wraping itself around you until the end. The author has a keen sense of the male mind in stress and her charactors are people you have meet.The changing of events kept me on edge wondering "What in the hell is Miller going to do now!" There is another book coming out, I am hoping,that will continue this story.This is a book that makes you want to attend an authors book review so you can ask all the questions of why?

"In a market of thinly plotted who-dunnits, "Water Dreams" is a more stubstantive "WHY-dunnit," with McDonald's skill at taking it even further down the path of memorable fiction--a "what-now." . . . It deals with the tricky business of fathers and sons growing up and growing away. It's a love story that flips the coin between family peace and outrage. It shows what happens when the lights go out on reason and responsibility, even if done with explainable, though blatantly illogical reasons and with no ill intent. . . In her first novel Jeanne McDonald doesn't even let her readers get their feet wet before they are deep into her story. By the last page, her characters are bona fide members of the reader's literary family."