Rescue

Summary (from the publisher): A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma--streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast.

Can you ever really save another person? Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off track, and for the first time in their ordered existence together, Webster fears for her future. His work shows him daily every danger the world contains, how wrong everything can go in a second. All the love a father can give a daughter is suddenly not enough.

Sheila's sudden return may be a godsend--or it may be exactly the wrong moment for a lifetime of questions and anger and longing to surface anew. What tore a young family apart? Is there even worse damage ahead? The questions lifted up in Anita Shreve's utterly enthralling new novel are deep and lasting, and this is a novel that could only have been written by a master of the human heart.

 

Review: Written from the perspective of Peter Webster, a young paramedic, this novel tells the story of how Webster fell in love with the beautiful but damaged Sheila Aresenault. An unexpected pregnancy and one speedy marriage later, Webster and Sheila struggle to make their marriage work. The story then shifts forward in time - Sheila has been gone for years and Webster has been raising their daughter, Rowan alone. Can Sheila return to their family? Can Rowan be pulled back from the brink she seems to be rushing towards?

 

I've read multiple novels by Anita Shreve, and this one, like the others, doesn't disappoint. Her writing is lovely and the characters are complex and intriguing. Her characters have a depth that is not fully uncovered. Sheila's history is never fully explored. Likewise, details of Peter's life are left open-ended, with just allusions such as "He'd once had a girlfriend who'd lived out that way" (84). Shreve has an eloquent writing style that I've long admired. Rather than simply saying Rowan was born into a tense household, she writes, "Within this irregular heartbeat, Rowan grew" (131).

 

However, when I sat down to write this review and contemplate the book, I feel like the plot is lacking. The major plot points are centered around moments of crisis. Sheila and Webster meet in the aftermath of her drunken crash. Sheila and Webster marry because of an unexpected pregnancy. The ultimate choice for Sheila to leave the family is driven by her destructive decisions. And the reason behind her returning is due to her daughter Rowan's destructive decisions. It seems that the characters passively wait for a crisis to propel them into motion. Otherwise, little happens, other than Webster's continued paramedic work.

 

Although I think it works, I was surprised by Shreve's decision to narrate the novel from a male perspective. I find it risky when an author narrates a novel from the perspective of the opposite gender. I think she's pulled it off, however, I suppose men may have a different opinion.

 

This was a fast, light read despite its weighty subject matter. I enjoyed reading it, despite my disappointments with the plot development.

 

Stars: 3