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Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut. Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refugeâ??she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night. Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered. Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on… (more)
In this book, family secrets have repercussions that affect multiple generations. Amanda and Mattie are close sisters who live on a farm in the midwest. They have a complicated relationship, and after Mattie marries, Amanda seems distraught but finds purpose as a nurse during WW1. After a bought of influenza, her world seems to upend. A love affair with a charming womanizer makes matters worse. How far should loyalty to a family member go? Is it healthy to perpetuate family secrets? This is a "thriller" in the sense that the events of the fateful night are not fully revealed until the last page. The author writes that she had difficulty with the plot, she wanted the focus to be more on the relationships in the novel, and I agree that the relationships were very compelling. The characters were interesting and believable. I enjoyed it a lot. ( )
I'm wondering why it took so long for me to read this book. I thought that it was a great story and found that the characters and plot stuck with me and appeared in my dreams. ( )
Not a bad read but I expected more. I enjoyed the characters but the plot was a bit contrived in places. The main character . Mandy, was difficult to like and/or sympathise with and I'd occasionally get her and her niece (Ruth), and the niece's mother, Mathilda, mixed up.
this is not so surprising as there were strong similarities between these characters and at times I thought they were supposed to merge together. ( )
Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "Required some online review to recall, but . . . Most frustratingly the reviews don't share the answer of what exactly did happen the night that Ruth's mother drowned. Remembered as good, but can't remember the ending! May have to re-read some day!" ( )
To Ben ~~~ and in memory of Louise Baecke Claeys (1902-1999) ~~~ and Marfa
First words
Ruth remembered drowning.
Quotations
…already his memory had lost the range of her expressions. He could summon her only in a few guises – glimpses of her face that for no particular reason had stuck in his mind.
… somehow they’d settled into a family at last, the various tasks of life divided comfortably among them, and the days now turned like a wheel with three spokes.
They felt an affection for one another based on their old love and sustained by avoiding personal conversation.
She was bone tired of all this running and hiding, of living alone with a monstrous hump of truth strapped to her back.
Fiction.
Literature.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:Deftly written and emotionally powerful, Drowning Ruth is a stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed. A mesmerizing and achingly beautiful debut. Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refugeâ??she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night. Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered. Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on
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Book description
The circumstances of the drowning of Ruth's mother serves as the catalyst that precipitates an intriguing flow of interrelated events in the lives of Amanda (the drowned woman's sister) and her neice Ruth.
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How far should loyalty to a family member go? Is it healthy to perpetuate family secrets? This is a "thriller" in the sense that the events of the fateful night are not fully revealed until the last page. The author writes that she had difficulty with the plot, she wanted the focus to be more on the relationships in the novel, and I agree that the relationships were very compelling. The characters were interesting and believable. I enjoyed it a lot. (