Product Description

From the author of the beloved #1 national bestseller Crow Lake comes an exceptional new novel of jealously, rivalry and the dangerous power of obsession.

Two brothers, Arthur and Jake Dunn, are the sons of a farmer in the mid-1930s, when life is tough and another world war is looming. Arthur is reticent, solid, dutiful and set to inherit the farm and his father’s character; Jake is younger, attractive, mercurial and dangerous to know – the family misfit. When a beautiful young woman comes into the community, the fragile balance of sibling rivalry tips over the edge.

Then there is Ian, the family’s next generation, and far too sure he knows the difference between right and wrong. By now it is the fifties, and the world has changed – a little, but not enough.

These two generations in the small town of Struan, Ontario, are tragically interlocked, linked by fate and community but separated by a war which devours its young men – its unimaginable horror reaching right into the heart of this remote corner of an empire. With her astonishing ability to turn the ratchet of tension slowly and delicately, Lawson builds their story to a shocking climax. Taut with apprehension, surprising us with moments of tenderness and humour, The Other Side of the Bridge is a compelling, humane and vividly evoked novel with an irresistible emotional undertow.

Arthur found himself staring down at the knife embedded in his foot. There was a surreal split second before the blood started to well up and then up it came, dark and thick as syrup.

Arthur looked at Jake and saw that he was staring at the knife. His expression was one of surprise, and this was something that Arthur wondered about later too. Was Jake surprised because he had never considered the possibility that he might be a less than perfect shot? Did he have that much confidence in himself, that little self-doubt?

Or was he merely surprised at how easy it was to give in to an impulse, and carry through the thought which lay in your mind? Simply to do whatever you wanted to do, and damn the consequences.
–from The Other Side of the Bridge


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49759 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-28
• Released on: 2007-08-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this follow-up to her acclaimed Crow Lake, Lawson again explores the moral quandaries of life in the Canadian North. At the story's poles are Arthur Dunn, a stolid, salt-of-the-earth farmer, and his brother, Jake, a handsome, smooth-talking snake in the grass, whose lifelong mutual resentments and betrayals culminate in a battle over the beautiful Laura, with Arthur, it seems, the unlikely winner. Observing, and eventually intervening in their saga, is Ian, a teenager who goes to work on Arthur's farm to get close to Laura, seeing in her the antithesis of the mother who abandoned his father and him. It's a standard romantic dilemma—who to choose: the goodhearted but dull provider or the seductive but unreliable rogue?—but it gains depth by being set in Lawson's epic narrative of the Northern Ontario town of Struan as it weathers Depression, war and the coming of television. It's a world of pristine landscapes and brutal winters, where beauty and harshness are inextricably intertwined, as when Ian brings home a puppy that gambols adorably about—and then playfully kills Ian's even cuter pet bunny. Lawson's evocative writing untangles her characters' confused impulses toward city and country, love and hate, good and evil. (Oct. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Some stories are as old as storytelling itself. Transpose them to our own time and their power is unaffected; peel away the particular circumstances and the core remains as fresh as it was in the Fertile Crescent. Slaying a monster, finding a treasure, surviving a natural disaster -- all are good tales, but none is so timeless as the story of rivalry between brothers.

That tale is at the heart of Mary Lawson's excellent second novel, The Other Side of the Bridge, which begins in the 1930s. Arthur and Jake Dunn are the sons of a farmer in the Canadian North. Arthur is large, kind, awkward, hard-working and trustworthy. Jake is a smaller fellow, clever and reckless, unscrupulous and charming. Arthur, hopeless in school, will be a good farmer like his father. Jake, adored and protected by his mother, knows how to avoid lifting a finger for anybody but himself.

Experience has made Arthur wary of Jake's gift for getting other people in trouble. The decisive moment happens at the bridge of the novel's title: an accident that nearly kills Jake. Jake brought it on himself, but Arthur feels guilty enough because he might have averted it. Ever after, Jake will make manipulative use of the accident and of Arthur's feelings -- until Jake leaves to make his fortune in the city.

We learn of these events as they happen, from Arthur's point of view. His story alternates with another that begins in the late 1950s and is told from the perspective of Ian Christopherson, a high school student who gets a summer job at Arthur's farm. Ian's father is the town doctor; Ian's mother has left the family for her lover in Toronto. Hurt and disgusted by his mother's departure, Ian develops a crush on Arthur's beautiful wife, even though -- or perhaps because -- she's the mother of three. Ian's point of view enriches his chapters; he's a good learner, a perceptive observer of this marriage and of Jake's eventual reappearance in Arthur's life. It would be unfair to give away the particulars; I'll just say that the brothers' reunion plays out with tragic inevitability.

Lawson is an Ontario native who now lives in England. As in her first novel, Crow Lake, this story is framed by the severe beauty of northern Canada, which drives away those who regard it as a wasteland but shapes the souls of those who love it. Lawson notes the humble details: horses "cropping grass with a sound like tearing bedsheets"; timber wolves "waiting for humans to move on, or die out, so that they could reclaim the land." Young Ian's best friend Pete, an Indian, loves the land and will choose to stay in the North as a guide: That way, he can steer rich tourists away from ruining the good fishing spots.

Lawson brings to life the social history of this isolated world, as the little town of Struan endures the pain of the Depression and the deprivations of World War II. Arthur tries to enlist but is disqualified by his flat feet; ruefully, dutifully, he stays home to run the farm with the help of two German prisoners of war. Of Arthur's boyhood gang, only one man returns alive -- and nearly quadriplegic. Arthur's shadowed 1940s slip into Ian's sunnier 1950s: Elvis on the radio, burgers and fries at red Formica tables, "easy" girls and "nice" girls, insistent hormones and looming final exams.

We see Ian struggling to find his own future, rebelling against the foregone conclusion that he'll be the town's third Dr. Christopherson in a row. As it is, he assists his father with a huge range of patients: a child with measles, a logger bleeding to death from a knife wound. However Ian demurs, the right choice of profession is obvious. (And the medical scenes feel authentic -- Lawson has done her homework.)

In these particulars, a deeper story gathers force: There's an almost Sophoclean momentum as events rush to their end. The reader prays that inescapable harm will not come to good people. But the novel's true literary antecedent is in Genesis: the story of Esau and Jacob, brothers in a dysfunctional family where each parent has a favorite child and the younger son can think circles around the older. Lawson honors these archetypes by using them discreetly; biblical undertones simply add to the story's richness.

The Other Side of the Bridge is an admirable novel. Its old-fashioned virtues were also apparent in Crow Lake -- narrative clarity, emotional directness, moral context and lack of pretension -- but Lawson has ripened as a writer, and this second novel is much broader and deeper. The author draws her characters with unobtrusive humor and compassion, and she meets one of the fiction writer's most difficult challenges: to portray goodness believably, without sugar or sentiment.

Reviewed by Frances Taliaferro
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
It's an age-old story--two brothers in love with the same woman--but in Lawson's masterful hands, the emotive tale of Arthur and Jake Dunn and the young woman who comes between them takes on a luminous originality. Set in a backwoods village in northern Canada, the story flashes back to 1930 to establish the tenacity of the Dunn brothers' relationship, and leaps forward to 1950, where Lawson, following her fine debut, Crow Lake (2002), cannily introduces a fourth element to the standard love triangle. Young Ian Christopherson, son of the town's only doctor, takes a summer job working on Arthur's farm, not because he craves the grueling labor but simply to be closer to Dunn's wife, Laura. When Jake resurfaces after more than a decade's absence, Ian interprets Laura's changed behavior in ways that will have devastating consequences. Lawson's melancholy saga of misspent youth, misplaced passion, and mistaken assumptions evinces both an enchanting delicacy and provocative vitality, and delivers an unerring sensitivity to place and time, people and passions. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

"How long would it take to atone?"


From childhood, Arthur Dunn is burdened by his size and doleful personality. Living on a farm in remote Struan, in northern Canada, Arthur and his younger brother, Jake, make an uneasy peace with their differences: "Jake was a subtle bully, a devious bully." Jake has been blessed with a sunny personality, articulate and charismatic, his mother's blessing, a shining son with a world of promise ahead. In contrast, Arthur toils beside his father on the farm, but suffers the ignominy of a sluggish mind through years of school he endures for his mother's sake. A pivotal moment occurs between the brothers when Jake suffers a terrible accident, certainly his own fault, yet weight of blame shifts to Arthur, who can barely comprehend his own confused reaction: "He felt breathless with a kind of excitement, made up in equal parts of rage and retribution."

Thereafter a spirit of enmity grows between Jake and Arthur, one that will poison their relationship and inextricably tie them to the past. What began as a sly one-upmanship on Jake's part accelerates to a campaign, their mother Jake's unwitting pawn. As reliable as a farm animal, Arthur is predictable in every respect, unquestioning, obedient and focused on the survival of the family farm. Falling in love with the preacher's daughter, Laura is Arthur's undoing; as soon as the handsome, charming Jake realizes Arthur's predicament, the die is cast. Buffeted by economic insecurity and the devastation of a world war, the brothers act out their roles as if the terrible conclusion is preordained.

Arthur survives, his back bent to the work at hand. True to his nature, Arthur cleans up his brother's wreckage, yet is of little comfort to the mother casually devastated by Jake's two-line goodbye note. Years later, a local young man, Ian Christopherson, son of the town's only doctor, begins working for Arthur, driven in part by an adolescent attraction to Laura, the boy the unwitting catalyst in the novel's powerful denouement. When Jake returns after a long absence, Ian is drawn to his easy affability, at the same time, comforted by Arthur's steadiness, unaware that he is a critical cog in the unfolding drama.

Lawson speaks the language of that murky territory beneath the external lives of her characters, digging into the tortured dynamics of two brothers with different needs, a woman caught in the excitement of first love, a young man running away from his future and a country decimated by the loss of sons in war. Unable to act on his instincts, Arthur resists a primal knowledge, sheathed in fear, while Jake is unerring in destroying his brother's dreams. Lawson is an astute observer of family dynamics and the instantaneous decisions that alter the future, a vast wheel turning inexorably toward resolution and a shattering conclusion. Luan Gaines/2006.

Quietly and effectively stunning
This, Mary Lawson's second novel (her worthy) first is Crow Lake), is a flat-out stunner. A story quietly told but laden with tension and anxiety, beauty and depth. It will stay with me for a long time. It is sure to be my list of year's best reads. Will be giving it to friends over the holidays, too.

I read Crow Lake, and then I waited and waited and waited...
..and was finally rewarded with this beautiful book. And no, it's not quite as wonderful as Crow Lake, but darn close.

I have always been angered by the parable of the Prodigal Son, wondering why the son who stayed at home was less important, less valued than the son who went away. This book explores that old parable and sets it on its ear. I won't bother with a plot synopsis, because others have already done that. I will talk about the difficult task the writer has set for herself. She tells a large part of this story from the viewpoint of the least interesting character, Arthur. Such is her gift that even though we are seeing the world through the dumbfounded eyes of the good son who remains on the farm, we still understand the pain and complexity of the emotional life swirling around him, even though it is almost completely lost on Arthur. I'm not quite sure how Lawson carried it off, but I can say that if you loved Crow Lake, you will not be disappointed.