January 10, 2011
Parker's affecting fifth novel mines two historical anecdotes from 1813 and 1970 to draw parallel narratives around island dwellers off the North Carolina coast. When a vessel carrying Theodosia, daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr, is attacked by pirates, she's left for dead on Nag's Head island. A parchment-thin hermit nurses her back to health and protects her as she embarks on a new life with a freed slave while still lamenting the loss of her possessions and her past. And in 1970, Woodrow, a black man, and Maggie and Whaley, two white sisters, are the last remaining residents of the same North Carolina island. Woodrow knows the myths that mainlanders have created around the trio's isolation: "They wanted to turn it into... something about how lost the three of them were across the water, all cut off from the rest of the world and turned peculiar because of it." Both sets of island people forge indelible allegiances to each other, linked as they are by blood and water. Parker's (Don't Make Me Stop Now) complex world is stocked with compelling characters brought to life by elegant prose.
March 15, 2011
In his latest novel, award winner Parker (Towns Without Rivers) takes readers deep into two time periods in the same pocket universe of North Carolina's Outer Banks. Theodosia Burr Alston is traveling by ship to reunite with her father, disgraced Founder Aaron Burr. In this reimagining of the real woman's mysterious disappearance in 1813, Theodosia's ship is attacked by pirates. Her apparent insanity spares her life. Theodosia finds herself stranded on a dismal island with no one but an old hermit with whom to share her history. A parallel story set in 1970 focuses on her 20th-century descendants, the last two white women alive on the island, and Woodrow, the black man who feels compelled to care for the women despite their complicated history. VERDICT While not a rollicking adventure or page-turning mystery, this is a highly readable study of fear, compulsion, and what it means to be trapped. The writing is smoky and beautiful; the lonely island setting is the most compelling character in the story. Against this backdrop, Parker delves into the human heart and distills for his readers the truths found there. Recommended for fans of Southern gothic, nautical, and historical fiction.--Therese Oneill, Monmouth, OR
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from January 1, 2011
The outer banks of North Carolina is the setting for two darkly linked tales spanning 150 years, both inspired by real-life events: the disappearance of disgraced former vice president Aaron Burr's daughter after her ship is battered by a storm off the Carolina coast--and possibly taken over by pirates--and the evacuation of a tiny island by its last three townspeople, including two elderly female descendents of Theodosia Burr Alston.
Theo, as she is known, is on her way to New York in 1813 to visit her father, whom she is determined to clear of treason charges, when fate intervenes. In Parker's visionary, feverish telling, she washes up on a beach where a hermit called Old Whaley nurses her to health, builds her a shelter and ultimately becomes her partner. Many decades later, in the 1970s, her great-great-great-great grandchildren, Maggie and Whaley, are looked after by Woodrow Thornton, a black man who lost his wife to Hurricane Wilma. Out of his commitment to the women, and out of guilt for leaving his beloved Sarah on the island the day of the storm while he did business on the mainland, he has refused to abandon the hurricane zone like so many others. The mainland has long been cursed for Maggie, whose obsession with a younger man who abandoned her led her into madness when she pursued him. The long shadow of slavery adds haunting resonance to this powerful, lyrically penetrating novel, the title of which has as much to do with the liquidity of history, identity and storytelling as it does with oceans and storms. Parker invokes magic as well as mystery in exploring the ways the past not only haunts the present but in some ways anticipates it. Like Faulkner and O'Connor, Parker creates a place of beauty and complexity which, in the end, one is reluctant to leave.
A vividly imagined historical tale of isolated lives.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
March 1, 2011
Imaginative prose and rich characters seamlessly meld in two narratives separated only in time. In one, Theodosia, famously missing daughter of notorious vice-president Aaron Burr, is stranded on an island off the coast of North Carolina after a pirate attack in 1813. Taken in by an island dweller, she accepts her fate and soon relinquishes her past life on the mainland and learns to fall in love again, not just with her savior but also with the island. In the other, on the same remote island, the dynamic between two white sisters and a black man in the 1970s is explored as they come to terms with leaving the island for good. As the last living residents, related by blood and spirit to Theodosia and her community, they reconsider their relationship with one another and their bonds to the island and its past. Parker develops Theodosias narrative less than the other, unfortunately for readers because it is in the former that the novel shines brightest. But all in all, theres much more here than meets the eye.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)