The Season of Open Water
A Novel
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
BONUS: This edition contains a The Season of Open Water discussion guide and an excerpt from Dawn Tripp's Game of Secrets.
From the critically acclaimed author of Moon Tide comes a mesmerizing novel of love and violence, family and betrayal. The Season of Open Water is the passionate, searing story of a young woman coming of age in a New England seacoast town that is swept up in the dangerous trade of rum-running.
It is October 1927. Bridge Weld is nineteen, headstrong and beautiful, working in her grandfather Noel's boatbuilding shop. When Noel is approached by a local bootlegger to refit a boat for smuggling, he feels in his gut that he should not accept the work, yet he takes the job for the money it offers and for the chance it gives him to build a future for his beloved granddaughter, Bridge, and her brother, Luce. What Noel doesn’t count on is that Luce will be lured into the rum work himself and will try to pull Bridge into it with him.
But Bridge has embarked on a different course. Caught up in a passion for Henry, a veteran of World War I, Bridge is propelled beyond the confines of her known world, and ultimately she must choose between the man who loves her and the brother to whom she has been loyal all her life. As Bridge strikes out on her own, Luce's fierce attachment spirals out of control.
Exquisitely written, haunting in its rendering of place, The Season of Open Water is a superb novel about a family and the lawlessness of the heart, a love story that explores the often inescapable connections between violence and desire.
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.
