Product Description

The scene of a childhood tragedy that forced her family to move, Seaboro, South Carolina, is the last place Catherine Leary wants to see again. But her father's last wish to have his ashes scattered there, and his young colleague's desire to write an article about him, conspire against Catherine. Hoping to stop her family's secrets from being exposed, she travels to her once-beloved Lowcountry town-and embarks on a poignant trip into the past...a journey that might lead her into a new life of love, forgiveness, and self-discovery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6642 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-06-05
• Released on: 2007-06-05
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

From Publishers Weekly
Until age 12, Catherine "Cappy" Leary lives, grows and plays with the neighboring Loughlin family in the South Carolina lowcountry town of Seaboro. After the accidental death of the Loughlins' youngest son, a tragedy for which Catherine blames herself, her father moves the family across the state. Fast forward to Catherine's 30th birthday, when she reluctantly returns to Seaboro for the first time in 18 years to scatter her father's ashes. As she reconnects, she uncovers new information about her father's ties to the area that help her release her guilt and learn to love freely. Henry's warm, smoothly paced novel explores well-traveled themes of reconciliation and rebirth with fresh energy.
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About the Author
Patti Callahan Henry lives with her husband and three children near Atlanta, Georgia, along the Chattahoochee River, where she is working on her next novel.

Customer Reviews

Love finding this new author
Between the Tides is my first novel by Patti Callahan Henry--and it won't be the last. I intend to devour them all. Her novels are `real life' stories with fully developed characters with problems experienced by many of us at one time or another. Her prose is lyrical and so vivid you actually visualize her settings and can smell the air and sea of the low country of South Carolina. I found myself rereading passages because they were so beautiful or because I found them profound in their simplicity.

Catherine Leary's father died and his last request was that his ashes be scattered in the Seaboro River in South Carolina. The last place Catherine wants to visit is her hometown and the Seaboro River. At age twelve her life changed following an accident she has always felt responsible for--and she doesn't want to revisit the intense pain.

Forrest Anderson, Catherine's former boyfriend and friend of her professor father, is writing a tribute to Catherine's father. To get a better feel of him and his life, Forrest intends to travel to Seaboro. Catherine doesn't want Forrest to expose her personal tragedy and accompanies him to her hometown in order to control his information.

The journey becomes more than Catherine anticipated as she learns things about her family, their friends and herself that she never knew. And along the way she reconnects with the life she loved and left and learns to love and forgive herself and others.

Armchair Interviews says: Highly recommended!

Everyone has one secret
This is a beautiful must read book. Captures your heart from the onset. I'd recommend it to everyone.

I honestly was a little put off by the ending; I thought it was going to be better, more detailed or complete. I felt like we were left hanging. It was only the very end.

Loved the rest.

A Thoroughly Enjoyable Read
It is perhaps the quickest read of this year. I read this in two and half hours. I've read her other books and this one is not as good as her others, but it still provides a delightful read. This book will definitely appeal to the booklover in you, filled with lots of quotes and titles of books that the main character's dad had talked about. It is just perfect to kick off summer vacation with!

This book focuses on Catherine "Cappy" Leary, whose life changed drastically in her twelfth summer in a tragic accident. After the accident, her family uprooted and moved back to her parents' hometown within a very short period of time. Catherine grieved all those years blaming herself for the family move as well as for the tragic accident. She had given up her "second mother," a warm and vibrant woman named Ellie, who was married and had two boys, Boyd and Sam. Catherine had a loving relationship with her father and a distant one with her mother. She had a best friend named Piper and life was just bursting at the seams. Then tragedy hit and it hit hard.

Now that Catherine is thirty years old and an orphan as her father had died nine months previously. In his will, he stated he wanted his ashes scattered over the river in that little South Carolina town that she had grown up in. Returning to the town that she has never forgotten, Catherine meets her past and learned the dark secrets that were her dad's and others'. Even at the age of thirty, it is never too late to grow up. In the process, she realizes the truth about herself and the truth about her father's protege, Forrest, whom she used to date years before she started dating the college basketball recruiter.

The story is choppy in places and the ending is too rushed, but other than that, it provided a wonderful story for a stormy night. It is definitely a quick read and a delightful one.

6/3/08