"The Silver Boat" Review

From Luanne Rice comes a story of love, pain, searching and family myth in “The Silver Boat” (Apr. 5, 2011). This book is an adult fiction novel set mostly on Martha’s Vineyard, but it also includes a mission to Ireland.

            “The Silver Boat” centers primarily around three close sisters who have dealt with pain and grief in their own unique ways. Their grief swells from the abandonment they felt when their father set sail in a solo transatlantic mission to get from Martha’s Vineyard to his home country of Ireland. He planned to search for a certain document and vowed not to return until he located it. Twenty-eight years later, and he hasn’t come back. The only communication they had from him was a phone call when he’d first arrived in a port in Kerry, Ireland. The sisters’ mother had passed away the previous fall, so the loss of a parent is quite raw again as they gather in the early spring at their childhood home on Martha’s Vineyard.

            Darrah “Dar” McCarthy is the oldest sibling. Closest amongst the sisters with their dad, she finds steely determination to find out what really happened to their father. Never married, she receives comfort, friendship and commitment from longtime friend Andy Mayhew. She is the sister who excels at being able to read emotions in her sisters. She deals with the unknown regarding her father by throwing herself into the drawings for her graphic novel. They concentrate on a character named Dulse.

            Dulse is a water spirit who’s motivated by grief and desire. This makes her very powerful, so much so that she is able to bring her sisters – Heath and Finn – back to life after they’d been turned into “Rosa rugosa” (beautiful beach roses) by their maternal grandmother (who seemed to lack respect for their father).

            Middle sister Rory McCarthy Chase is in the throes of a love-hate relationship with her cheating husband Jonathan, who’s left her for a much younger gal. She still loves him because she’s loved him so long and for the kids (two kids with him, plus a daughter from a previous marriage), but she despises him for having an affair. She despises herself to some degree as well, being compulsive at times when she checks her husband’s e-mail with the password she’s known for years or checking his cell phone’s call log on their billing statements. Can she move forward without thoughts of her husband weighing her down?

            The youngest, Delia McCarthy Monaghan, is a married woman worrying a lot about her son, Pete. Pete left a couple years back for Alaska to try to make a living by fishing. He has never met his two-year-old daughter, Vanessa. The grandparents are mostly raising their granddaughter with Pete gone and Vanessa’s eighteen-year-old mother about to have another baby. Delia yearns to have Pete back, especially for Vanessa, but her husband, Jim, doesn’t seem to want him around. He appears to have written him off as an irresponsible alcoholic and drug addict. Will Pete come around and return to finally meet his daughter? Can Jim and Pete reconcile?

            The sisters learn much in Ireland. They reach Cobh (pronounced like Cove) in their search to learn what happened to their dad, Michael McCarthy. Will they find the answers they seek? Is their dad still alive? If so, why didn’t he return?

            Rice’s writing on “The Silver Boat” is cohesive and gently paced, and it did not leave any questions unanswered in my mind. This is a novel to read if you’re already a Rice fan or enjoy novels that are heartwarming yet heart-wrenching. Consider picking up the book if you’re simply looking for a new read. If you prefer more action/adventure or scenes from the paranormal, this book will not give you that.