Melissa Brown

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, April 2015

A search for an elusive sea monster at the height of World War II sounds like the plot of a genre-mashup movie. But in At the Water’s Edge, the latest novel from Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen, what starts out as a lark on the part of rich, entitled friends turns into a quest that is at times frightening, liberating and even comical.

Bored and wealthy Ellis schemes to find and photograph the Loch Ness Monster in an attempt to one-up his dismissive father, who was ultimately discredited in his own infamous attempt. He and his best friend, Hank, drag Ellis’ wife, Maddie, along—and her journey to uncover truths about herself, her marriage and the kind of life she wants to lead provides the novel’s heart.

Glad simply to be alive after encountering German U-boats during their Atlantic crossing, Maddie isn’t willing to participate in the boys’ foolish scheme—and she soon starts to wonder whether the true monster might be closer to home. Ellis and Hank certainly possess money and the breeding that often goes along with it, but as their search proves futile, Ellis displays increasing disdain for Maddie and the people of the Scottish village where they’ve sheltered. As Ellis’ desperation mounts, Maddie fears for the safety of herself and her newfound friends, including the brooding, handsome proprietor of the village inn.

Gruen skillfully weaves in historical reference points, making Maddie’s story seem larger than that individual focus. The author conveys the lure of the Scottish Highlands, and its storied lore and mystery help create her novel’s riveting, ethereal atmosphere. Maddie’s growing self-awareness is presented in stark—and welcome—contrast to her husband’s spiral into conceit and self-deception.

At the Water’s Edge captivates with its drama, intrigue and glimpses of both the dark and light of humanity. As Jane Austen once wrote, “with due exceptions, woman feels for woman very promptly and compassionately.” For all her faults, Maddie’s tragic history and her courage in the face of her present predicament will win readers to her side.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Losing a loved one to the chaos of war would be devastating enough, but lingering doubt as to whether a husband were alive or dead could slowly consume a wife. Especially if her last words to him were an ultimatum: Choose his reporting work, or her. In The Wind Is Not a River, Helen and John Easley find themselves caught in the upheaval of World War II, separated emotionally and physically by the lengths to which he will go for a story.

John poses as a lieutenant to sneak into the Japanese-occupied Aleutian Islands, hoping to report about this little-known theatre of the war—which the Americans would prefer the press keep quiet about. His plane goes down on the island of Attu as the novel opens, and instantly the reader is thrust into his fight for survival. The weather is unrelenting and unstable, the only food available is what he and the crash’s only other survivor, young airman Karl, can catch and kill, and discovery by Japanese soldiers is a daily threat.

Helen, at home with her guilt and her ill father, eventually can take the waiting no longer. She, too, lies her way north to Alaska, joining a troupe of USO Swingettes, in a passionate effort to find John.

Canadian writer Brian Payton deftly juxtaposes Helen’s and John’s separate struggles to stay alive and sane against forces that would render them otherwise. Set against a meticulously described Alaskan setting, each harrowing or quietly painful minute is portrayed in realistic detail. John’s ordeal proves miraculous and heartbreaking, told in passages that are sometimes difficult to read due to their intensity of rawness or sorrow. The book arcs poetically across the distance between Helen and John, drawing out the separation that they (and the reader) can hardly bear.

Told through the eyes of Trina, a broken yet resilient mother writing to her missing daughter, I’m Staying Here unfolds the little-known story of the town of Curon in Italy’s South Tyrol province, sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland, where Nazism and Mussolini’s fascism collide.

Trina graduates from high school in 1923 with plans to teach just as Mussolini comes to power and outlaws the use of German as a teaching language. At the same time, old plans for a destructive dam resurface. Young and impetuous, Trina pals around with her friends, pines for an idealistic young farmer named Erich and soon joins an underground network of teachers. She marries Erich and settles into his family’s old farmhouse. By the 1930s, they have two children, Michael and Marica.

Like their families and neighbors, Trina and Erich have only known Curon’s idyllic mountains and pastures. But as World War II looms closer, Mussolini’s and Hitler’s ideologies take root in the villagers’ hearts and minds, dividing neighbors who’ve known each other their whole lives. As the war takes Curon’s men, the dam that will swallow up their town begins to take shape.

Through headstrong, opinionated Trina’s narration, author Marco Balzano voices the anger of a people whose story has been overshadowed in history. Though some nuance has been lost in translation from the Italian and the tense shifts confusingly at times, I’m Staying Here reads like a confessional, conveying raw emotion with a forceful, memorable impact. For Trina and Erich, the pain of compounding losses grows, from the deaths of loved ones to their young daughter’s devastating disappearance, while they witness the terrors of war and the dam’s construction.

Balzano writes convincingly of a woman who has been torn apart by the sacrifices and suffering she’s endured, but who stalwartly carries on. In writing to her lost daughter, Trina attempts to let go. And as Trina’s own mother would tell her, “All we can do is move forward.”