Product Description

For ten years, Alexandra “Cat” Rucker has been on the run from her past. With an endless supply of bourbon and a series of meaningless jobs, Cat is struggling to forget her Ohio hometown and the rural farmhouse she once called home. But a sudden call from an old neighbor forces Cat to return to the home and family she never intended to see again. It seems that Cat’s mother is dead.

What Cat finds at the old farmhouse is disturbing and confusing: a suicide note, written on lilac stationery and neatly sealed in a ziplock bag, that reads: Cat, He isn’t who you think he is. Mom xxxooo

One note, ten words–one for every year she has been gone–completely turns Cat’s world upside down. Seeking to unravel the mystery of her mother’s death, Cat must confront her past to discover who “he” might be: her tyrannical, abusive father, now in a coma after suffering a stroke? Her brother, Jared, named after her mother’s true love (who is also her father’s best friend)? The town coroner, Andrew Reilly, who seems to have known Cat’s mother long before she landed on a slab in his morgue? Or Addison Watkins, Cat’s first and only love?

The closer Cat gets to the truth, the harder it is for her to repress the memory and the impact of the events that sent her away so many years ago.

Taut, gripping, and edgy, The Last Bridge is an intense novel of family secrets, darkest impulses, and deep-seated love. Teri Coyne has created a stunning tapestry of pain and passion where past and present are seamlessly interwoven to tell a story that sears and warms in equal measure.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #599608 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-28
• Released on: 2009-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00" h x 6.35" w x 9.50" l, .98 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345507310
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Book Description
For ten years, Alexandra “Cat” Rucker has been on the run from her past. With an endless supply of bourbon and a series of meaningless jobs, Cat is struggling to forget her Ohio hometown and the rural farmhouse she once called home. But a sudden call from an old neighbor forces Cat to return to the home and family she never intended to see again. It seems that Cat’s mother is dead.

What Cat finds at the old farmhouse is disturbing and confusing: a suicide note, written on lilac stationery and neatly sealed in a ziplock bag, that reads: Cat, He isn’t who you think he is. Mom xxxooo

One note, ten words--one for every year she has been gone--completely turns Cat’s world upside down. Seeking to unravel the mystery of her mother’s death, Cat must confront her past to discover who “he” might be: her tyrannical, abusive father, now in a coma after suffering a stroke? Her brother, Jared, named after her mother’s true love (who is also her father’s best friend)? The town coroner, Andrew Reilly, who seems to have known Cat’s mother long before she landed on a slab in his morgue? Or Addison Watkins, Cat’s first and only love?

The closer Cat gets to the truth, the harder it is for her to repress the memory and the impact of the events that sent her away so many years ago.

Taut, gripping, and edgy, The Last Bridge is an intense novel of family secrets, darkest impulses, and deep-seated love. Teri Coyne has created a stunning tapestry of pain and passion where past and present are seamlessly interwoven to tell a story that sears and warms in equal measure.

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Amazon Exclusive: Teri Coyne on The Last Bridge

Many people ask me how I went from doing stand-up comedy to writing a dark debut novel. For me, writing fiction is a lot like doing comedy. In comedy, the truth is hidden in the humor, like a pill ground up and mixed into a spoonful of jelly. It’s there, but you don’t feel it right away. In fiction, the story does the same thing. Characters can say and do what you cannot (or would rather not) do. In essence they are the “jelly.”

At first glance, we think of comedy and tragedy as opposite ends of the spectrum of experience but as many of us know, it is not the events of our lives that define our happiness, it is how we choose to perceive and process them. I make that same distinction in writing. For many people The Last Bridge is a dark novel, for me it is a story of a woman who is trying to get a handle on how she wants to perceive her story. In spite of what she has been through, she has a sense of humor (albeit a very dark one.) I think that helps her survive.

I don’t distinguish between funny or sad, light or dark, romance or adventure. I want to tell you a story and take you somewhere you have never been. I want to you to care about how it is going to end and hopefully, just like that spoonful of jelly, you might feel a little better (or different) without even noticing. --Teri Coyne

(Photo © Michael J. Richter)

From Publishers Weekly
Coyne's compelling debut shines an unnerving light on the fallout from a childhood rooted in abuse. Alexandra Cat Rucker, an alcoholic strip club cocktail waitress, returns to her childhood home after her mother kills herself. She's been gone 10 years and is now uncomfortable around her brother, Jared, and sister, Wendy; while confronting her past, she also tries to discern the meaning of her mother's suicide note: He isn't who you think he is. Alternating between the complicated present and the horrific past, Coyne portrays the myriad ways family members cope with abuse. Cat's mother lived in a world of her own; Cat, the oldest, bore the brunt of her father's attacks; Jared buried himself in school sports, occasionally coming to his sister's defense when it was safe to do so; and Wendy focused on being the perfect daughter. Then there's Addison Watkins, the son of a family friend who at once offered a haven and a challenge to teenage Cat. Though the occasional one-liners distract rather than enhance, Coyne's prose effortlessly carries the reader through a thorny history and into possible redemption. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“[A] compelling debut … Coyne's prose effortlessly carries the reader through a thorny history and into possible redemption.” —Publishers Weekly

“Teri Coyne grabbed me from the first page and never let me go. I read through the night until I came to the last lovely chapter. The Last Bridge is a whirlwind of a book.”—Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Forgive Me


“Teri Coyne has created a hypnotic portrait of an American family under attack from within, told with such unflinching honesty that you cannot take your eyes off the page. Not since Bastard Out of Carolina have we seen the breathtaking courage it takes to survive and triumph after paying the price of dark secrets corroding the heart of a family. Cat stings you with her caustic tongue, makes you laugh out loud with her wild humor, brings you to tears with the revelation of her trials, and finally lifts you to your feet as she fights her way free to love again. This is a tough, rewarding read you'll never forget.” —Jonis Agee, author of The River Wife

"Searing and authentic . . . Teri Coyne has created a compelling mystery, a family drama and a literary delight. Read the first page, and you won’t be able to put it down.”—Masha Hamilton, author of The Camel Bookmobile

“Thrumming with a desperate, malevolent intensity, Coyne’s debut novel is a psychological tour de force, a disturbing yet ultimately redemptive tale of the burden of secrets and the tenacity of love.”—Booklist


From the Hardcover edition.

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Customer Reviews

Devoured this Book
This book was nearly impossible to put down. I was hooked from the first sentence and never looked back. The premise is a young woman, Cat, who comes back to hometown after her mother commits suicide. Cat had left home ten years prior after having severed all contact with her parents. When she returns she is wasted, both literally and figuratively.

As Cat begins to investigate the circumstances surrounding her mother's suicide and attempts to interpret a cryptic note her mother left for her, her memories of her family and how they coped with a horrifically abusive father begin to surface in spite of her attempts to numb herself with alcohol. "He is not who you think he is," is all she has to go on to put the pieces of her shattered life back together.

The story alternates between Cat's memories, beginning in childhood, and the present until the two connect. Along the way, her relationship with her siblings, her parents, and her first love are revealed in all of their complexity. At many points in time you are left wondering who is villian or hero at any given point, including Cat herself. This is a psychological thriller/mystery at it's best. At the end of each chapter you want more, until suddenly you find yourself at the end of the book.

I appreciated that this book was fast-paced, and yet the characters were very well drawn. On the book cover, this author is compared to Jodi Picoult, but in fact, I found it better than the last few Picoults I've read. Picoult has a tendency to sacrifice character development for the sake of creating suspense in the storyline, but that is not the case with The Last Bridge. Another difference is the lack of a legal/trial component.

I gave the book 4 1/2 stars not because I thought the writing was so superior, but just because it is so rare that a book hooks me so deeply that it is almost unbearable to stop reading it until I find out what happens next.

Big story potential lost in emotionless, uncompellling delivery.
I really wanted to like this book. It started off with a bang (literally) and a bit of a mystery, and although I finished the book with a small feeling of reassurance, overall I found the writing to be pedestrian and the character development wanting.

Spoilers ahead so beware, but I'll try to keep them to a minimum...

The story focuses around Cat, the alcoholic victim of an abusive father and a generally loveless family. The story is written in the first person from Cat's perspective and generally alternates between current-day events and flashbacks to her past, which fill in many of the blanks in Cat's self-destructive behavior. In the opening pages we learn that Cat ran away from her family ten years ago and only returns to help take care of affairs when when a family friend tells her that her father had a debilitating stroke and her mother committed suicide, the latter leaving a mysteriously vague note addressed specifically to Cat.

The rest of the book largely develops around Cat's convoluted family tree and their emotional relationships. Everyone in the family has at least one secret. Some, like Cat's alcoholism, are more obvious than others and through the pages we learn those secrets and how they affected other people and at times other people's secrets. The story culminates with a more-or-less happy ending, which is to say that there's a general feeling of optimism in the final pages which wasn't there in the beginning.

That being said, I agree with several other reviewers here and with Karie Hoskins' review in specific: "It never felt like I was reading about people...it felt like I was reading a plot that the author, Teri Coyne, stuck people in." (Karie, sorry for copying your line but it's 100% accurate of how I feel about this book too.) There are scenes within this book which should be personally and emotionally distressing to the reader. There are events which occur which should make the reader wince or just want to put the book down and walk away for awhile. But this never happens.

The book reads like a cross between a police report and an unauthorized biography being read by the subject of the bio. The characters never seem to exhibit any real emotional impact, and there's not nearly enough character development to make you wonder why. Cat does a fair share of crying in this book, but it's all presented in a very matter-of-fact way which leaves the reader wondering if it's worth caring about the character at all.

An example: I was reading a passage in the book where, from my perspective, Cat is having a disagreement with another character as they trade lines back and forth. Several lines into this dialog Cat says something, and Coyne writes that Cat is shouting. At no point prior to this was there any indication that Cat was anything beyond annoyed at the person she was talking to, but it turns out Cat wasn't talking to anyone, she was angrily shouting. There's no indication ANYWHERE that this was happening until after it happened, and even then the fact is delivered in such an emotionally sterile manner that you find yourself completely ambivalent to Cat's emotional state. Worse, as the dispute-cum-argument cools down, there's no description of the emotional state of anyone involved, leading the reader to wonder what, if any, affect it will have on the characters in the book.

Another example: At one point in the book Cat's father tackles her, rapes her, then passes out on top of her. Cat crawls out from underneath him and drags herself under a bush to recover. In what is possibly one of the most understated events of the book, Cat then discovers that her leg was broken and that must have been what the cracking sound she heard was. Then, as quickly as the subject arose, it was dismissed just as quickly. I actually had to go back and reread the section, thinking I had missed the actual event of her leg breaking, but it turns out I didn't miss anything. It just wasn't there.

And that's the fundamental problem with most of this book. It is loaded with traumatic events - rape, brutal attacks, alcoholic stupors, abandonment, lies and more - but they're presented in such a matter-of-fact way that it's impossible to connect or sympathize with any of the characters. At times it's like reading a police or coroner's report. A coroner performing an autopsy lacks an emotional connection to his subject, and his report reflects that. This book reads in much the same way. There's no emotional involvement. "Just the facts, ma'am."

The book is an extremely easy read. It took less than four hours of casual reading spread over three days to finish it from cover to cover. Although I never found myself forcing myself to continue reading, I also never found myself utterly compelled to find out what happened next. At times I found myself reading the book and thinking it would be a decent screenplay, perhaps living actors could invoke the emotional attachment that the author failed to invoke. There is definitely potential here and I would like to see that potential explored, but I don't think the author has the tools or technique to fully evoke that potential.

Hard to digest, harder to put down
There is so much to say about this novel that I'm having a hard time thinking of how to put it in words. I would have finished it in one sitting, except motherhood called me out of my revelry. So, I finished it in 2 sittings. I have read reviews where the reader didn't like the main character, Cat, but I did. She was hugely flawed and yes some of it she could have stopped but she was a product of her environment to a large extent. I am all for adults to quit blaming their parents for what's wrong with them and to take ownership for their lives, but in some circumstances it takes a bit longer. Cat is a drunk. She's a hard living drunk who travels from town to town doing jobs that give her enough cash for a hotel and booze. With one phone call she has to return to the house she left 10 years before without looking back. Her mom killed herself and her dad is in a coma. She comes back to the family farm to be confronted with the events that caused her to leave all those years ago.

There are some twists and turns in the book that I didn't see coming. There was one that I did see coming but I think most readers would as well. I think she alludes to it during most of the book. I had no respect for Cat's mom at all. Cat's sister Wendy hides behind a facade of being happy and her brother Jared is torn with guilt that he can't get over. So essentially they are one messed up family.

The note that is described is essential to the book but not in the way I thought it was be. "He" refers to many different men in Cat's life but for me it didn't stick to one more clearly than the other. What I think might have been more poignant is if the note said, "Cat - You aren't who you think you are." Either way it did lead Cat down the road to self-discovery.

I've never been abused and I can not imagine what it is like to be in a relationship like that. I do know from other reading and studying it in school, that when it's good it's so good and when it's bad, it's terrifying. Cat's dad was definitely a monster and I'm glad he finally got what he deserved. Karma has a way of being very vengeful.

This novel is dark, daring, brooding, honest and hopeful. During parts of the book I cried and recovered. At the end though I continuously cried. The journey that Ms. Coyne takes us on in this book is one that I will never forget. It will resonate with me for a very long time.