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A book awash with yearning, love, and the simple sweetness of family, – held afloat by ties as deep as time, now tested by the ravages of dementia. For Joey Green, our first person POV narrator, a trip back to Beaufort, South Carolina, to visit his parental home, is tinged with both grief, and unexpectedly, terror, as he struggles to solve a mystery and a crime that threatens his ailing father’s safe harbor.

“Emotion was trying to escape like steam from a covered pot “

Part family drama, part mystery, this book is an immersive and beautifully-rendered Southern tale of hopes and dreams, (lived and hidden, existing or newly rendered) and the intimate bonds they provoke, giving a life, any life, irrefutable meaning (or, perhaps, as may be apparent, unleashing insidious compulsion).

As Joey unpacks a story drenched in tragedy, years old, setting in motion a slow and illuminating stream of secrets long shrouded, he must come to terms with the past, a quickly intensifying present, and a now chaotically uncertain future (for himself, as well as those he loves).

“I let a deep sorrow wash over me, combined with a gratitude for the moment.”

“Rich with antebellum charm”, oozing an atmosphere revealed at an almost (but not quite) languid pace – this story teems with fishing trips and praline cookies, shrimpers and trawlers, salt marshes and moonlight, and at the heart of it all, deeply-rooted southern families and their progeny, saturated across generations replete with money and entitlement, and others, quite simply, surviving on love and what it may ask of us.

A lovely read, and a haunting one – echoing with the pull of salt air and sea islands, and what can be seen as one man’s scrambling to shore up a sanctuary of sorts, amidst the ephemeral and unpredictable passage of time.

A great big thank you to @BookishFirst, the author and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.