Rescue: A Novel (Hardcover)
$26.99
Backordered at least 2 weeks or possibly unavailable.
December 2010 Indie Next List
“Rookie paramedic Peter Webster is sent to the scene of a car accident where he encounters a badly injured and drunken Sheila. Despite her lack of remorse for the accident or gratitude for her rescue, naive Webster begins a relationship with the secretive Sheila. Soon he finds life moving way too fast for his taste until, once again, an accident turns their lives upside down. Fifteen years later, can Webster face his own role in a difficult decision and learn to offer forgiveness, or will he continue running from life's many challenges?”
— Kristin Bates, McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, MI
Description
A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage.
Peter Webster pulls a young woman out of a car wreck that should have killed her. Sheila Arsenault haunts his thoughts, and despite his misgivings Peter is soon embroiled in an intense love affair -- and in Sheila's troubled world.
Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off course, and for the first time in their quiet life together Peter fears for her future. He seeks out the only person who may be able to help Rowan, although Sheila's return is sure to unleash all the questions he has carefully been keeping at bay: Why did a mother leave her family? How did the marriage of two people so deeply in love unravel?
A story about trespass and forgiveness, secrets and the seismic force of the truth, Rescue is a masterful portrayal of a family trying to understand its fractured past and begin again.
About the Author
Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of more than fifteen novels, including Testimony; The Pilot's Wife, which was a selection of Oprah's Book Club; and The Weight of Water, which was a finalist for England's Orange prize. She lives in Massachusetts.
Praise For…
"From its opening car crash, 'Rescue' is worth the ride....No one can create the beginning of a complex relationship like Shreve....Shreve gets deep inside these characters, and her insights draw us into their lives.... A story of hope and fear, of promises made and broken.... Shreve creates a little world, peoples it with believable characters, and puts them through agonizing and joyful moments without a false note or a dissonant figure of speech."—Brigitte Weeks, Washington Post
"A paramedic and the troubled young beauty he saves propel Shreve's engrossing latest...With the insistent thrum of life-and-death EMT calls as background, Shreve's vividly told tale captures the deep-seated fears of mortality and loneliness that can drive us to test the bounds of family and forgiveness."—Joanna Powell, People
"Rescue is Shreve at her best....Shreve knows love may be intense, life-changing and passionate, but it is never enough. Her characters bruise each other as much as they comfort each other...."Rescue" is full of themes Shreve loves: How a moment can change a life; loss and love; forgiveness and pain."—Mary Foster, Associated Press
"Compelling.... Fans of Anita Shreve will likely devour this new novel."—Sara Vilkomerson, Entertainment Weekly
"A thoroughly absorbing, perfectly paced domestic drama. Alternating between life-and-death scenarios Pete encounters on the job and the fraught family tension between father and daughter, Shreve pulls readers right into her story."—Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
