1890s, Cape Cod: Between tides, a man deserts his wife and his post as keeper of the Chatham Beach Lifesaving Station to start a new family far to the south, at Cape Hatteras.
1940s: His daughter, en route to serve in World War II with the Red Cross, travels to Cape Cod where she meets his first wife, Blythe, reanimating a life she had long buried: memories of her courtship, her bitter losses, and her husband's slow-motion vanishing.
Khoury based her debut novel on a true story recorded in historical newspaper accounts. Readers will enjoy her slow-paced emotional historical fiction about the pain inflicted by the Civil War on soldiers and their families.
Mesmerizing ... While Blythe’s limited perspective on Gil makes the plot feel a bit too simplistic, Khoury describes Gil’s relationship to the Outer Banks with lyrical precision ... This should do the trick as elevated beach reading.
