Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0345439244, Paperback)
Emotionally neglected by her mother, abandoned by her father, Mattie O’Rourke spent her childhood starved for the one thing she thought she’d never find: love. When her mother dies and, at twenty-two, she finds herself completely without ties of any kind, Mattie takes a chance at ending her loneliness and moves to a tiny coastal Florida town. At the Suwannee Swifty convenience store, a sea change envelops her. Mattie O’Rourke sees Proteus Nicholas Blue and their fate is sealed after only a few shy, stolen glances.
Nick walks into Mattie’s life having fled his own. A lifelong fisherman from a remote island off the coast, Nick is haunted by the certain knowledge that the sea will be the death of him (as it has been for all the Blue men) and he has resolved to leave it behind. But as Nick and Mattie settle into an intimacy that both comforts and surprises them, Nick feels the inextricable pull of the waxing moon’s tide and the siren’s call of the dolphins that, Blue legend has it, are his brethren.
And so it is that Mattie, who only months before felt that happiness would never find her, returns with Nick to the island home that nurtured him and finds herself embraced by a large and loving family and an alluring and sensual landscape. Life on Lethe is transforming for Mattie. But Nick always knew that the sea would claim him, and all of Mattie’s love cannot prevent the tragedy that is their destiny.
Moving and enchanting, Remembering Blue is a lush story of love, loss, and the mythic power of the ocean, told in an elegant and passionate voice that could only come from Connie May Fowler.
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:10:49 -0500)
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Wikipedia in English
“Like some of us on my daddy’s side of the family used to be dolphins. And if
we’re dolphins, we’re free. See? But when we’re men, we’re not…. This is the
part that scares me. The legend says that sometimes the dolphins decide they want
one of us back.” (Fowler 71)
When Nick and Mattie return to live on Lethe, they build a house, plant a garden, and each finds purpose -- Nick in his beloved shrimping and Mattie in returning to college and forging ties with the Blue family. For over two years they live an idyllic existence interrupted only by typical extended-family trials. Even the threat of Hurricane Cerberus is met with thorough preparations, and all safely weather the storm. But Mattie presciently muses about the name of the storm:
…the naming committee obviously barked at a very tall tree to come with that one, Cerberus being the mythological three-headed, dragon-tailed dog who guards the kingdom of the dead, allowing spirits to enter but never leave (Fowler 244).
Whether Cerberus blew in an ill wind or Nick’s fate simply caught up with him, is left a mystery. His boat, the Mattie Fiona, is found with no one aboard; his body is never recovered. As Mattie is the narrator of the tale, the reader is left to judge whether or not she could have rescued Nick from his seeming destiny. (