Sweet Water and Desire Lines by Christina Baker Kline
(William Morrow, reprinted 2014)
With four well-received novels under her belt Christina
Baker Kline stormed onto best-seller lists and into the hearts of book groups
everywhere with her 2013 surprise best-seller Orphan Train. Four of her
earlier novels are being reprinted and repackaged this summer for readers who
missed her marvelous prose and characterization the first time around.
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In Sweet Water,
Cassie Simon is trying to earn a living in New York City as an artist. Growing up in Massachusetts after the death
of her mother, Cassie had very little contact with her maternal grandparents
which is why she is shocked to receive a phone call from a magistrate in
Tennessee requesting her presence at the reading of her grandfather’s
will. She can’t imagine what Armory
Clyde might have left her or why, and is very shocked to learn it is not only
sixty acres in Sweetwater, Tennessee, but sixty acres that her grandfather
could probably have sold several times over the years to developers, making
Cassie curious about the man she never knew and his reasons for not selling the
land, deciding to leave it to her instead.
Taking her inheritance as a sign, of what she’s not quite sure, Cassie
decides to move to the small Southern town from where her mother, aunt and
uncle came, and the place of her mother’s death. Not quite sure what she is looking for or
hoping to gain from her move, Cassie is overcome with the emotions, memories
and stories that await her in a place where she’ll learn about a mother she
never knew and more about herself than she would have ever thought
possible. Told from two points of view,
Cassie and an omniscient narrator adds depth and perspective to Cassie’s story
and prevents her from appearing too self-absorbed.
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Desire Lines begins
on the night of Kathryn Campbell’s high school graduation when she and her four
best friends sit around a bonfire reliving their past, planning and looking
forward to their future, a future none of them can imagine will not include
Jennifer Pelletier. As the bonfire fades
away, so does Jennifer, walking off into the woods, never to be seen again by
her friends. Once almost sisters,
Kathryn felt Jennifer withdrawing over their senior year, but she was never
able to pinpoint what was happening to her friend and spends the next ten years
missing Jennifer, wondering what happened and what Kathryn might have been able
to do to help her. After a failed
marriage, Kathryn returns to their hometown of Maine, hoping that by going back
to where it all began to fall apart she will be able to piece together what
happened and find peace for herself and maybe too for Jennifer. As Kathryn
revisits her past, she finds herself taking stock of not only her relationship
with Jennifer, but with their other friends and her own family, thinking about
her future, one that she knows will not include Jennifer, but can be anything
she wants.
Baker Kline fills her novels with characters that stay with
us long after we have turned the last page.
She writes about memories, the truth we find in them, the truth we tell
ourselves and how memories can haunt and even cripple our daily lives if we
allow them to. She reminds us of the
redemptive power of forgiveness, but only if we can forgive ourselves
first. Readers who only just discovered her last year
will be pleased to have her older works readily available as they wait to see
what she creates for us next.
