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When We Believed in Mermaids: A Novel

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For years, rumours of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be… A: Barbara O’Neal is the author of When We Believed in Mermaids. Q: What genre is When We Believed in Mermaids? Josie’s face swims up in front of me. The way it was fifteen years ago. The way it looked on television overnight. Kit’s on a quest, and somewhat ironically, Josie is the macguffin she’s looking for. But all the while, both of them are internally exploring their memories of the life they once shared together. As those memories reach toward the present, Josie and Kit reach towards each other.

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This story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. An emotionally layered and engrossing story of a family that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?Love, kindness, and empathy are at the core of this story, and it all stands on an imaginative, unique premise unlike any I’ve read before. Charming and absorbing' Daily Mail 'Sleepless in Seattle meets Wild . . . A beautifully crafted tale of love, self-acceptance, and blisters' Sunday Express It must have happened to me a hundred times in the first year, especially because we never found a body. Impossible, given the circumstances. Also impossible that she survived. Not for her the ordinary demise of a fiery car accident or a leap off a bridge, though she threatened those often enough. O’Neal makes us examine our own youth through a different lens, to observe our parents and siblings as if through a kaleidoscope. One subtle turn transforms angels into demons, and in many ways, that is how the girls experience their lives. It is the subtle differences that ultimately create a chasm between them. Each has a unique story, even if they both grew up on the Pacific, surfing every opportunity they got, with parents who were admired by so many in a world that for most would seem like a golden life. But it wasn’t ever really that. Instead, it was a life plagued by abuse and addiction, one which marred the beauty and the possibilities of what should have been.

When We Believed in Mermaids book review - the book blog life When We Believed in Mermaids book review - the book blog life

Instead, she made of her life a great ruinous drama, just like our parents, with a suitably catastrophic ending. Three estranged sisters reconnect in their Louisiana hometown to face an unresolved past in a heartfelt novel about family, grief, secrets, and forgiveness. Jane Austen's subtle and witty novel of secrets and suppression, lies and seduction, brilliantly portrays a world where rigid social convention clashes with the impulses of the heart. It tells the story of two very different sisters who find themselves thrown into an unkind world when their father dies. Marianne, wild and impulsive, falls dangerously in love, while Elinor suffers her own private heartbreak but conceals her true feelings, even from those closest to her.What was not so good? The story idea starts off with a bang. Once Kit gets to New Zealand, rather than marching forward to find her sister, she gets caught in a love affair with Javier, a rather cardboard character who says little but touches Kit in variously well-described ways. The relationship seems a sideshow (one of those curves on Lombard Street) to the overall novel and gets in the way in the first third of the book. Maybe it’s someone for Kit to interact with during the scenes where she would have been alone. Javier is a singer/guitarist star of some sort who only seems to have to perform if he wants to and is hanging around New Zealand for no apparent purpose other than to show up in scenes in this book. And they are badass. Solid nine feet, with a gorgeous glassy curl that’s much rarer than people think. I paddle out and wait my turn, catch the line, and leap to my feet to ride right on the edge. This is the instant I live for, that moment when nothing else is in my head. Nothing can be. It’s me and the water and the sky, the sound of the rippling surf. The sound of my breath. The edge of the board slipping along the water, cold over my ankles even in booties. Ice-cold. Perfect balance, shivering, hair slapping my cheek. I had always wanted a grand adventure and I’ve always loved reading about epic journeys. When I was a teen, I read an article in National Geographic about walking the Appalachian Trail and thought, I need to do that. I grew up in an outdoorsy family and married a man who loved the outdoors even more. But we never got to an adventure until we were empty nesters. In our late fifties we decided to walk 1400 miles from the cold North Sea to the warm Mediterranean on the legendary long-distance trail the GR5. After finishing our epic journey, I needed to share my love of European walking with others.

Book Review: When We Believed in Mermaids - Literary Quicksand Book Review: When We Believed in Mermaids - Literary Quicksand

Then I shake myself. This happens all the time. Anyone who has lost somebody they love has experienced it—the head in the crowd on a busy street, the person at the grocery story who moves just like her. The rush to catch up, so relieved that she is actually still alive . . . A young woman without prospects at a ball in Gilded Age Newport, Rhode Island is a target for a certain kind of “suitor.”Our family restaurant was called Eden, both exclusive and permissive, frequented by hippie movie stars and their drug dealers. Our parents were part of that world too—stars in their realm, each wielding power on their own terms, my father the jovial, welcoming chef with his hearty laugh and excessive habits, my mother on his arm, a charming coquette.

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