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A hot tale for frigid temps

February 1st, 2010 Lisa - Central

Yay!  Another great surprise of a book.  I took this one with me on a weekend away, and it was just the thing I needed.

Janet Burroway’s Bridge of Sand starts out with Dana Ullman burying her Pennsylvania state senator husband on 9/11.  Though ready to divorce him when they found out he was dying, she stayed with him and nursed him until the end.  The coincidence of him dying so close to 9/11 (she could see the flames of United 93 on the way to the funeral) was an emotional punch, and she falls into a serious funk.  Adding to her woes she learns her husband left her in debt, so she sells her house and takes what is left to head west.

But she heads to Georgia first.  While packing up, she came across a photo of her grandmother who had lived there.  Dana had spent 2 years with her as a teenager and worked at the local grocery store.  At this point in her life, she needs to connect with something from her past.  When she arrives she discovers the house is gone, replaced by a shopping mall.  So she looks for people she knew back when, and the only one around is Cassius.  He worked at the store, and Dana never even spoke with him; but for some reason, he agrees to meet her at the beach.

And the sparks fly.  They spend a passionate few days with each other, falling deeply in love.  But Cassius has to go back to work and never returns.  And his ex-wife and mother of his daughter (to whom he’s devoted) sends a letter threatening to beat the *** out of Dana’s white ***, and Dana flees to Pelican Bay, Florida, where Cassius had hinted about a cabin where she could stay with his aunt Solly.  Will Cassius follow her there?

Dana finds Solly, who turns out to be a white man almost-living with Trudy (the aunt).  Dana rents out the cabin behind Solly’s convenience store and stays because she wants to wait for Cassius.  Soon she becomes enmeshed in the small fishing community.  Pelican Bay is split in two by a ’sink;’ the whites live on one side, the blacks the other.  Not much, and everything, happens here.  The characters are many and varied.  There’s Adena, a single mom real estate agent and a master manipulator, related to Solly by marriage.  Bernadette, her daughter, sullen and goth-like, who sort-of works at the store.  Herbie, local handyman, in love with Bernadette.  And inscrutable Trudy lets it be known that she will not be sharing any of her family’s secrets, let alone her relationship with Solly.   Solly has a stroke and it’s left to Dana to run the store while he’s away.  But when Solly dies and leaves the store to Dana, it is clear to her that he wanted her to decide who to give it to.  Adena, dollar signs in her eyes, wants to sell to investors.  Trudy just needs a place to live.  Mysteries and machinations are slowly revealed.  But, more importantly, does Cassius ever come?

Burroway captures the feel of the Florida panhandle and transported me away from single digit temps to the humid, drippy tropics.  We get a different awareness of race as Dana’s ingrained attitudes rub up against the reality of Cassius, who easily points out the subleties us whites don’t get.  And Dana is especially appealing; she is someone who is torn many times by life’s cruelties, but she maintains an openness to life and to this new world she happened onto.  There is much much more to this book than I was able to include here.  Each of Burroway’s words is important; I found myself rereading many sentences to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  I loved this well-rendered tale of a unique locale and evolving community, of a loving and compassionate woman and the trials she encounters.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction