In 1962, a young mother finds herself pregnant again, to her
dismay. Before her first pregnancy, she was a swimmer with reasonable dreams of
going to the Olympics. After giving birth, her former coach discourages her
from thinking about competing again. Living on the Oregon coast, she settles
for swimming out to a tiny island and diving off the high cliff, with her husband
watching over her from a boat. Then one day she drives to the beach by herself
and swims out, never to be seen again.
Years later, the daughter she left behind, Agnes, mother of
twin girls, is driving to the airport in a bad storm to pick up her husband
when an accident takes the life of one of the twins. Years after that, the
surviving twin, Eleanor, is now her mother’s caretaker, basically, as Agnes
spends her days and nights drunk. When she is awake she reviles Eleanor for
being the surviving twin, claiming it is Eleanor’s fault Esme died that day.
Eleanor’s parents are divorced, but her father has been as present in her life
as possible, trying to make her life with her mother as bearable as possible.
It’s not an easy life, but it’s predictable, until one day when Eleanor steps
through a door and finds herself in a different time and place. She returns,
but finds herself changed. And it turns out not to be a one-time event. The
travelings get stranger, and the consequences to Eleanor get drastic. What is
happening? Where is she going when she leaves her own life, and why is it
happening? Who is doing this to her?
The story is a fantasy with psychological underpinnings, and
I found it gripping. While it is obvious from very near the beginning who is
causing Eleanor’s travelings, Gurley takes his time explaining who the other
character in that world is. There is a high degree of tension- Eleanor is
really being badly hurt by her adventures. The problems I had with the story
was that it’s never explained *how* the travelings are precipitated, and the
end has a little bit of a deus ex machina
element to it. But I found that acceptable in return for the rest of the story
being outstanding.
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I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review.
Neither of these things influenced my review.
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