Patti graciously agreed to an interview and I know getting a little background and Patti's personal perspective will entice you to buy it.
Enjoy!
ISBN-13: 9780399583124
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Release Date: 07-11-2017
Length: 352pp
Buy It: Amazon/B&N/Kobo/IndieBound/Audible
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Release Date: 07-11-2017
Length: 352pp
Buy It: Amazon/B&N/Kobo/IndieBound/Audible
OVERVIEW:
The women who spent their childhood summers in a small southern town discover it harbors secrets as lush as the marshes that surround it...
Bonny Blankenship’s most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend, Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that changed everything, the night that Lainey’s mother disappeared.
Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor, and her marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter, Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. During lazy summer days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.
The women who spent their childhood summers in a small southern town discover it harbors secrets as lush as the marshes that surround it...
Bonny Blankenship’s most treasured memories are of idyllic summers spent in Watersend, South Carolina, with her best friend, Lainey McKay. Amid the sand dunes and oak trees draped with Spanish moss, they swam and wished for happy-ever-afters, then escaped to the local bookshop to read and whisper in the glorious cool silence. Until the night that changed everything, the night that Lainey’s mother disappeared.
Now, in her early fifties, Bonny is desperate to clear her head after a tragic mistake threatens her career as an emergency room doctor, and her marriage crumbles around her. With her troubled teenage daughter, Piper, in tow, she goes back to the beloved river house, where she is soon joined by Lainey and her two young children. During lazy summer days and magical nights, they reunite with bookshop owner Mimi, who is tangled with the past and its mysteries. As the three women cling to a fragile peace, buried secrets and long ago loves return like the tide.
Excerpt––
Prologue
Mimi the Bookseller
We are defined by the moods and whims of a wild tidal river surrounding our small town, cradling us in its curved basin. We don’t shape it; it shapes us. The gray-blue water brings us what it will and only when it desires. One sweltering, languid afternoon as I shelved dusty paperbacks, I looked up to see a ghost. The girl was the spitting image of a woman I knew years ago—too many summers ago to count. It could have been another whim of the river.
Just when it seemed things were settled and placid in Watersend, South Carolina, in breezed the daughter of a Summer Sister. I should have been expecting her because of course I’d heard that Bonny Blankenship had returned to the old Moreland family house. It’s that kind of town; I hear everything. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a bit of a shock seeing her walk through my door.
A young girl, I guessed on the brink of her twenties, stood in my bookshop, a daughter of the past who walked in all wide-eyed and exhaling like she’d finally found what she was looking for. It was a look I knew well. So glad to be in a cozy bookshop, in air-conditioned comfort, surrounded by stories, and to find that in the chaos of the world there was still a place like this. A place where books were piled to the ceiling and tables were crowded with the paraphernalia of reading: bookmarks, reading lights, stationery, pens and framed quotes to inspire. I’m no dummy. I keep the air conditioner set to frigid. I know I’m luring customers and some might call it bribery, but whatever works, works. I lost my store once, and now that I have it again, I’ll do pretty much anything to keep it alive.
Her blond ponytail pulled at the skin around her heart-shaped face, moist at the hairline and cheeks flushed pink. Her round eyes, almost disproportionate to her other tiny features, were wide open to wonder as she looked around the store. She possessed an ephemeral quality one can’t buy with plastic surgery or proper training. Her mother had been the same, almost floating through childhood with her best friend, Lainey. They came in here for the same reasons—cold air and escape. Two little girls who were so close it seemed that they’d been sewn together by the seams of their flowered sundresses. History, they say, repeats itself. But I surely hope not.
Was she like her mother, Bonny, all fire and no ice? Older than her years and too young to know better is how I once described her to a customer. The years blended together, but those three summers in the late 1970s stood out like a beacon in the fog of my memory.
I welcomed this ghost into the store but then walked away, and allowed her to roam at her leisure. Thirty minutes later, she chose a poetry book and set it on the counter. I approached her with a smile. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
She held a cell phone in her hand, and it appeared permanently attached, just as it did to all the young ones who came in here. Cells are an appendage now, I’d told my book club.
“I did find exactly what I was looking for. This is a great bookshop.” The girl sounded like her mother, too. A certain lilt to her voice like she was about to break into song and then changed her mind. How do I remember all these small details from so long ago when I can’t remember where I put my car keys or glasses? I know why, of course—for reasons I’ve never told a soul.
“Thank you. I’m Mimi. The owner of this messy store. Welcome. Are you visiting Watersend?” I kept my voice light, but I wasn’t much good at pretending.
“Yes,” the girl said. “I’m here on vacation.” She caught my gaze. It took my breath away; so familiar and yet completely foreign. “My name’s Piper,” she said and brushed at a wayward hair falling into her eyes.
“Well, Piper. I’m glad to meet you. I hope you’ll come back while you’re in town.”
“Oh, I will,” she said. “I’m glad I found this on my first day.”
“Me, too. And if you’re here for the summer, there are plenty of summer book clubs that you can join.” I handed her a sheet of paper that listed the clubs and dates and times. “There’s even a poetry one.”
“Thanks,” Piper said. “I might stop by. But I’m going to be . . . busy.”
“Well, busy is something for sure,” I said.
Piper laughed, but it sounded rusty with disuse. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, busy is something to be but maybe not the best thing to be?” I took off my glasses and they dangled from the purple string that held them there so I wouldn’t lose them. I smiled to let her know that my advice was harmless, just an old woman rambling along. I didn’t want to scare her off. I rang up the book and placed it in a brown paper bag with our book logo stamped onto it with my favorite quote, “Books may well be the only true magic. Alice Hoffman.” And then handed it to Piper.
She smiled in a sad way. I wanted to tell her how much she looked like her mother, but she didn’t seem to be the kind of young woman who would want to hear such a thing. There she was trying to carve out her own place in the world with her little nose stud, like a sparkling freckle, and black eyeliner smudged around her dark blue eyes like dark curtains.
“Well. Anyhow, Watersend is a great place to be for the summer. I think you’ll like it. What brings you?” I already knew the answer: the river. But she would believe it was her mother, or the house.
Piper exhaled and rolled her eyes in that perfect way all teenagers do. “I’m here to help my mom and babysit her best friend’s kids. They used to spend their summers here and my mom fixed the old house and . . .” She trailed off like she’d forgotten why she’d arrived at all.
“That sounds like a better job than most get in the summer,” I said, straightening some papers on the counter that didn’t need straightening.
“You’re probably right,” Piper said, “but I just didn’t imagine spending my first college summer with my mom and her friend and little kids.”
“You say they’ve been here before. Do I know them?” I looked away with my false questions, feeling slightly ashamed for prodding into what I already knew.
“I don’t know. Maybe. My mom is Bonny. Her maiden name was Moreland. Her friend is Lainey.”
“The Summer Sisters.” I smiled. “For gravy’s sake, who could forget them?”
“You know them?” Piper leaned forward conspiratorially. “And isn’t that the stupidest name? Summer Sisters.”
“Not such a bad name if you knew them then.”
“It sounds ridiculous to me.”
“Ah. I’m sure it does.”
She nodded, this young girl, and she looked at me the way the young can and do when the aged baffle them, when they don’t believe that they will ever be the older ones.
“Well, ʼleast tell your mother I said hello.”
“I will.” Piper held up her book, now wrapped in a paper bag. “And thanks for this.”
“You’re welcome. Come anytime and make your escape.”
I sidled out from around the counter and walked Piper to the front of the store, struggling for something to say, anything. But nothing seemed right. She hesitated at the entrance and then asked, “Did they have other friends or was it just the two of them?”
“I forget, dear. It was so, so long ago.”
Piper pushed open the door and let herself out without another word.
Now, everyone knows I believe in stories being told. Why else would I own a bookshop? I also know that some stories should stay crouched in the dusty corners of the past. It had been a record-breaking hot summer the last time those Summer Sisters were here with their boozy, somnolent parents who paid the children no mind, almost forty years ago now. The town had loved those girls: silly and full of sass, buzzing around town pretending to be Nancy Drew, solving mysteries that should have never been solved.
That night, at our monthly poker game over bourbon and pound cake with Loretta and Ella and my beau, Harrington, I would say, “You will not believe who walked into the store today.” And they would guess until they couldn’t anymore and I would say, “A Summer Sister’s daughter.”
I walked outside and watched Piper as she headed toward the market, her poetry book in a paper bag and dragging one of those wagons that announces, “I’m a vacationer”: rolling carts that people tug around full of towels and toys, groceries and kids.
Heat wavered off the brick sidewalk like Watersend was one large coffee mug. Posters hung in store windows to announce the summer concert series on the square, and the new market awning was bright yellow and garish against a sky where gray clouds gathered into thunderheads. But instead of a young girl with a cell phone and a nose stud, I saw her mother, Bonny, a wildflower of a child, walking along the same street sure as punch that nothing could ever go wrong.
Overhead, clouds gathered into an afternoon congregation—a reminder that once the past begins to nudge itself into the present, the future changes. Soon the thunder would begin and yes, indeed, a summer storm was coming.
Chapter One
Bonny Blankenship
It wouldn’t be a secret much longer.
Behind the locked exam room door I held the phone to my ear with the particular thrill and sense of finishing a job well done. All the planning, all the night shifts and research papers and grueling interviews had finally led to this job offer as the new emergency room director at Emory Hospital in Atlanta. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my job as an ER doc in Charleston; I actually did. It was that I needed to leave Charleston. If I was going to leave my husband, then I needed to leave the city where his family was as entrenched as Fort Sumter.
No one knew about this change or move, except of course the administrator on the other end of the line.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “I’m just curious. When did you know you wanted to be a doctor? Your path has been as straightforward and unwavering as I’ve ever seen.”
“I knew when I was eight years old.” I fiddled with the oxygen gauge on the wall, straightened the tissue paper covering the exam table. How very many times I’d been here saving a life, or calming a woman who believed her husband was having a heart attack when he was experiencing a panic attack. I’d inserted IVs, administered CPR, stitched and set and soothed. I’d diagnosed correctly and incorrectly, and spent my hours untangling confusing symptoms in this room—the same room where I was accepting my new job.
“Well, your dedication has paid off. Congratulations, Dr. Blankenship.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. “I’m thrilled for this new chapter in my life.” I spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper. “Will you please allow me a couple days to inform my hospital before you announce it there?”
“Of course. You just let us know when you’re ready and we’ll get things rolling on our end. We look forward to seeing you in thirty days.”
“Absolutely,” I said, this time louder. “I will see you then, and I’ll be in touch.”
I hung up with an irresistible need to let out a joyful “yes!” but instead I returned to the emergency room to do my job. I would quietly fulfill my duties while inside I celebrated the last accomplishment before I left my husband and this city.
Make sure Piper was off to college. Done.
Fix the old family river house in South Carolina to sell. Almost done.
Get a new job out of town. Check.
The ER at Medical University of South Carolina, affectionately called MUSC, was as familiar to me as my own home, maybe even more so. There was the squeak of shoes on the linoleum, the beeping of machines and the harsh ringing of phones. The soft swish-hush of the doorways opening and closing, the antiseptic aroma sometimes mixed with the metallic smell of blood and sweat. The nurses and doctors here were like family. I’d spent long hours with them in the intimate confines of small rooms and cramped hallways, but soon I would give them up as I would so many other things—the cost of being free to start a new life without Lucas.
When had I known I wanted to be a doctor? The administrator’s question echoed in my mind. There were insights I’ve known slowly, like the need to leave Lucas. And there were others that happened in a flash, like wanting to become a doctor.
When I was eight years old I saw a toddler drown. The lifeguard pulled a lifeless three-year-old body from the deep end’s faraway bottom under the high dive and then screamed for a doctor. A woman, another child’s mother in a pink and green Lilly bathing suit cover-up, appeared and kneeled before the body. She then breathed and pumped life back into the little girl. When the child sputtered and coughed and cried for her mama, the dead risen to life, a true-world Lazarus from Sunday school lessons in a little girl’s body, I knew what and who I would become. I never learned that mom’s name, but I think of her often—a doctor and a mom. In that moment, all the world flowered open with possibility. There was no either/or. There was anything and everything.
From that point on, while others had photos of John Travolta and Stevie Nicks on their walls, I’d had anatomy posters labeling the muscles and veins and organs. A full-size plastic skeleton I’d begged my dad to buy me from a flea market in downtown Atlanta stood sentinel on a metal pole in the corner of my childhood room.
I became a doctor for the same reasons I imagined others became astronauts—to explore an unknown that spreads into infinity. The body is something that can never be fully discovered, its intricacies astounding and its mysteries boundless. Just when science understands what one organ or cell does—a liver or a stem cell—we are wrong, or partly wrong, and there’s more, always more.
I’d never wavered or turned back from the desire.
That particular unseasonably warm May afternoon, the air crackled with lightning and the emergency room felt overcharged and electric. I’d filled in an extra shift for another doctor, not only for the extra padding in my paycheck, but also for the itchy need to be away from home as much as possible. The house felt empty and lifeless without Piper in it. Loneliness echoed along the hallways and through the rooms of my immaculate house. But I tasted a new life waiting for me. It was time. I’d been patient and I’d been meticulous.
I went from exam room to exam room, writing orders on charts, listening to patients and writing prescriptions with both skill and intuition. Just before sunset, I sat in a cubicle stitching the forefinger of a young mother who had cut herself in the most mundane of ways—slicing carrots. Just one more patient. Just one more shift.
Exhaustion held tight to me, even as I poured another cup of bitter coffee from the break station and splashed cold water on my face in the doctors’ locker room. The months of double shifts, the many sleepless nights and the low thrum of constant worry had taken their toll. My sympathetic nervous system was on high alert, the fight-or-flight adrenaline pushing me forward against my will. Secret keeping depleted me, as if each withheld word and admission rotted the life out of me. Fatigue and blurry-mindedness were the prices I paid for finding my way out of my marriage.
But in a breath, the evening shifted. A multicar wreck and a kite-boarding accident blew through the double doors within minutes of one another. Screams, slamming doors and sirens arrived as the accouterments of emergency.
Time bends and slows for me in emergency situations; I don’t feel the fear until it’s over. I see with acute vision and can tell everyone what to do and when and how. I know the reasons for this are chemical—adrenaline from the adrenals, serotonin from my neurotransmitters—but I also know it’s what I’m meant to do.
The first stretcher came through: a man with dark, windswept hair and an arm twisted at such an odd angle that for a moment there was an illusion of two people on the same gurney because that would be the only way that arm would make sense. He was silent, his jaw clenched as he bit down, teeth on teeth—a controlled pain until it wrenched free in a groan.
I ran to his side and I felt the world tilting beneath my feet. My heart pulsed high into my throat and my arms tingled. I couldn’t make sense of his face here in my ER—so familiar and in pain—but the electric shock under my ribs told me what I knew before my mind could piece things together. Time warped and stood still, moved backward and then forward.
Owen McKay. This was the man who held both my childhood and my heart in his wild hands. My best friend Lainey’s brother.
Until he rolled in on a stretcher, I hadn’t seen Owen McKay in over twenty years, since the night before my wedding to Lucas. Why was he here? Wasn’t he somewhere with wilderness and cliffs and silence?
“Owen?”
“Bee.” He opened his eyes. They were the same deep brown, but filmed with pain.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as if I’d run into him in a bar or on the street, a casual old friend.
“Kite boarding.” A low groan escaped as he tried to speak. “The wind took me. I . . .”
“Doc,” the paramedic shouted at me. “What room?”
“I got this.” I grabbed the stretcher’s cold metal edge, rolling it into the cubicle with two other nurses. The paramedic rattled off the facts of his injuries: broken collarbone, possible internal bleeding, probable water in his lungs, dislocated shoulder and possibly more.
I went into automatic mode and activated trauma protocol: I ordered the ultrasounds, the IV line, the vital signs and the fluids. Owen faded in and out, and the paramedics professed another fact: he’d almost drowned. A surfer on the beach had administered CPR. I hollered orders, desperate to keep him alive. It’s this way with every patient, but I’m not in love with every patient.
Past and present blended. He was flat on the stretcher with his eyes closed; he was flat on a splintered warm dock in South Carolina, holding my hand and stargazing. He was calling my name in pain; he was whispering my name to jump into the river. He was holding his arm above his head with a broken bone; he was waving at me across the beach. He was old and he was young and we had all our life ahead of us and then none at all. I would have to tell Lainey, call her. She’d be devastated and worried, because that’s what she did—worried about Owen. But first, very first, I would have to save him.
Later, maybe ten minutes, another doctor, Marie, called for me. Owen had been wheeled into surgery, and I rushed off to the next urgent need: in cubicle C was one of the victims of the multicar crash. Others were being treated in separate rooms, doctors and nurses on call from all parts of the hospital to pick up the load. This patient was older, his hair gone gray but wavy and thick, like a young man’s. This patient’s heart rate was high and erratic; his blood pressure was dropping and his pupils were dilated. Same course of action: trauma protocol, and immediately he had two large-bore IV needles in his veins and Lactated Ringer’s coursing through the tubes to his body. I ordered a fast exam ultrasound that showed abdominal bleeding. He needed to go straight to the OR. No CAT scans, no X-rays. “Oxygen sat low. Restless. Blood pressure dropping. We have stage three shock and he needs to get to the OR stat,” I called out.
This man screamed, blind in his pain, his gaze searching for help. I didn’t check his chart, but drew a dosage of Dilaudid, the same dosage I’d just given Owen, and pushed it into his IV, relief only moments away as it coursed through his blood and dulled the agony.
Then his eyes flew open, and his gaze fixed on mine. He reached his hand out, bloody and mangled from the car where he’d been trapped; they’d released him with the Jaws of Life. Fear surrounded him like wavering fog.
“If I’m dying,” he said in a voice strangled with pain, “tell my wife and kids I have never loved anyone as I love them. Tell them.”
I’d been here before with patients who’ve said the same thing. It’s a natural instinct—don’t let me leave this world and let those I love have any doubt that I love them. Love—it’s the final word of so many and ultimately all that remains.
Not very often do humans get to see all that truly matters, but I often do. Those fearful of death don’t say, “Tell my wife to check my bank account.” Or “Do I look okay?” They talk of love and making sure those around them know of their love. Mostly.
“Stay with me,” I said to him, motioning to the nurse to grab the end of the stretcher. “You can tell them.”
He winced as the nurse and orderly prepared to move toward the OR, but he didn’t release my hand. Sometimes patients don’t realize they’re holding on to me as they hold on to life.
He closed his eyes and spoke on an exhale. “God, please let me live. I haven’t done the one thing I meant to do.”
“What?” I asked as we ran down the hallway. The surgical suite doors swished open and we pushed his gurney inside. I bent over and he focused directly on my eyes, steady.
I’ve seen people die before, many times. I’ve seen the light fade slowly or sometimes in an instant, how the body becomes only that—a body, a vessel, which once held animation or spirit. And he was fading.
“Tell me about your one thing. What is it?” I needed to keep him talking, let him find a reason to live. “Tell me.”
Our Interview
Patti Hi! Welcome to The Reading Frenzy.
I loved The Bookshop at Water’s End, could you tell my readers a bit about it.
I loved The Bookshop at Water’s End, could you tell my readers a bit about it.
I’m
so thrilled that you loved it!
This book opens in the voice of Mimi, owner of the welcoming local
bookstore. Remembering when main characters Bonny Blankenship (the ER
physician) and Lainey Maloney, “The Summer Sisters,” visited her store in
Watersend, SC, as girls vacationing in the 1970s, she functions as an anchor
for them and for Piper, Bonny’s daughter, who has failed in college
and been arrested for public intoxication. Mimi knows what the other women must
learn: how the past can and does connect to the present.
Bonny
and Lainey are women with professionally successful but fractured personal
lives, women in holding patterns. Bonny is an emergency room doctor in
Charleston, SC, leaving her angry husband to start a new ER position in
Atlanta, GA. She has planned to put the river house on the market before she
begins her new life until she makes a tragic mistake on a chaotic evening in
the emergency room. Her anguish prompts her to entreat her oldest and best
friend Lainey to bring her young children and spend the summer with her and
Piper at the river house. Lainey agrees but dreads returning after so many
years to the place where her addicted mother disappeared.
We
learn about these women as they navigate the summer and new lives! We discover
that the past is never past and that who we are meant to be is often hidden in
the past.
I read that this book was your love letter to
bookstores.
What was the name of the bookstore were your memories were first made?
What was the name of the bookstore were your memories were first made?
Is it still around?
I can’t remember a specific bookstore as
much as I remember the libraries and the bookstores as one sanctuary where I
spent my days hiding and reading and trying to find a way to understand the
world around me. This was my love letter to the places and spaces that
protected me in childhood.
Patti was there a particular occurrence that inspired
you to write about the events in this novel?
YES!
This book was once what I believed to be two separate inspirations but soon
combined into one story. The first idea was inspired by my first career as a
nurse. I wanted to write about a woman – an ER doctor – who made a terrible
error and had to re-evaluate her life. And the second idea came to me after
visiting an old childhood home, and I realized the power of geography to hold
memories. These two ideas – losing identity and a place where a childhood
identity had been formed – combined into a complicated and interesting
narrative.
I love family dramas and the relationship between
Bonny and Piper is so realistic.
Do you know each and every outcome between your characters before you wrote them, or did they sometimes surprise you?
Do you know each and every outcome between your characters before you wrote them, or did they sometimes surprise you?
They
surprise me. I know what the initial impetus for crisis is, and then after that
I let things unfold. I know the vague destination we are headed and from there
I let the characters interact and surprise all of us.
Patti, I loved Piper, the good girl at heart who makes
bad choices.
How hard was it for you to get into the mindset of this young woman?
How hard was it for you to get into the mindset of this young woman?
I’m
so glad you liked Piper. I love her so much. Oh, it wasn’t hard at all to get
in her mindset. I have three grown children, so I have been through the teen
years (still am, actually going through them). I understand that the decisions
we make don’t always come from the best part of our self, and I wanted Piper to
dig deep to find that piece of herself that was real and true.
Lowcountry fiction is one of my favorite genres and I
love many authors who write it but I’ve always wondered when and who penned the
name.
Do you know?
Do you know?
I
actually don’t know! But I am going to venture a guess that it was Anne Rivers
Siddons or Pat Conroy – they are the center of gravity for this genre; they are
the inspiration and the solid ground.
Patti, thank you so much for taking the time to answer
my questions. Good Luck with the book. I loved it!
Are you touring with this release? Where can fans find you?
Are you touring with this release? Where can fans find you?
Thank
you so much, Debbie. Yes, I am touring and you can find me here:
http://www.patticallahanhenry.com/events/
Praise––
From the Publisher
“Patti Callahan Henry has written the best novel of her career with The Bookshop at Water’s End. I absolutely adored it and predict it will be one of the most-loved books of the year. In fact, it’s so good I wish I’d written it myself!”—Dorothea Benton Frank, New York Times bestselling author of Same Beach, Next Year“The Bookshop at Water’s End carries us along the graceful curves and outwardly serene story line of two childhood friends returning to their summer riverside home. But like the river she writes about, Patti’s plot roils with strong undercurrents of murky secrets, tragedy and the pulsing tides of self-discovery. No one writes about the power of family and friends like Patti Callahan Henry. The Bookshop at Water’s End is a must-read for your summer!”—Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of Beach House for Rent
“From the very first page, Patti Callahan Henry draws you in like the tide, revealing long-simmering secrets that will test family and friendships, and explores the question: do we tell our stories or do our stories tell us? In lush, lyrical prose, Henry explores the power of forgiveness, especially in ourselves. Every page was a treat.”—Laura Lane McNeal, bestselling author of Dollbaby
“Patti Callahan Henry’s stories are always woven with magic and mystery, and The Bookshop at Water’s End knots these elements into a deeply satisfying and heartfelt tale of loss and betrayal, friendship and forgiveness. The sun is shining, the tide is turning, summer and Patti Henry’s latest masterpiece beckon. Resistance is futile!”—Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Weekenders
“I adore Patti Callahan Henry’s new novel. The Bookshop at Water’s End is a juicy summer read about family secrets, forgotten friendships and the power of books to change our lives.”—Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Sunshine Sisters
Praise for Patti Callahan Henry and her novels
“A Southern woman’s journey into truth. An emotionally intense, beautiful, and unforgettable novel. I loved it.”—Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Virgin River novels
“Patti Callahan Henry’s writing is as lush and magical as the Lowcountry she loves.”—Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of A Lowcountry Wedding
“The sea sings in every syllable.”—Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times bestselling author of The Girls of August
“A lyrical exploration of love and longing, secrets and suspicion, and family and friendship.”―Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Weekenders
“Patti Callahan Henry asks the big, equivocal questions about what it means to be a mother, a child, a family, and the answers she finds in And Then I Found Youwill surprise you, provoke you, and rearrange your heart.”—Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Two If by Sea
“This is everything you expect from Patti Callahan Henry—lyrical writing, characters worth rooting for, a sure-footed belief in the power of goodness—plus a twisty plot that will keep the pages turning long into the night.”—Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Everyone
“Patti Callahan Henry understands the delicate balance of power inside a marriage.”—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of At the Water’s Edge
“This tale of a Lowcountry woman’s reblossoming will touch your heart and make you wonder about long-forgotten possibilities waiting to be rediscovered in your own family and soul.”—The Charleston Post and Courier (SC)
“Patti Callahan Henry joins the ranks of Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy.”—Deborah Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Beloved Woman
“Patti Callahan Henry seamlessly combines mystery, family love, and personal journey all in one engrossing tale.”―Diane Chamberlain, USA Today bestselling author of Pretending to Dance
“A Southern woman’s journey into truth. An emotionally intense, beautiful, and unforgettable novel. I loved it.”—Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Virgin River novels
“Patti Callahan Henry’s writing is as lush and magical as the Lowcountry she loves.”—Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of A Lowcountry Wedding
“The sea sings in every syllable.”—Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times bestselling author of The Girls of August
“A lyrical exploration of love and longing, secrets and suspicion, and family and friendship.”―Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Weekenders
“Patti Callahan Henry asks the big, equivocal questions about what it means to be a mother, a child, a family, and the answers she finds in And Then I Found Youwill surprise you, provoke you, and rearrange your heart.”—Jacquelyn Mitchard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Two If by Sea
“This is everything you expect from Patti Callahan Henry—lyrical writing, characters worth rooting for, a sure-footed belief in the power of goodness—plus a twisty plot that will keep the pages turning long into the night.”—Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Everyone
“Patti Callahan Henry understands the delicate balance of power inside a marriage.”—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of At the Water’s Edge
“This tale of a Lowcountry woman’s reblossoming will touch your heart and make you wonder about long-forgotten possibilities waiting to be rediscovered in your own family and soul.”—The Charleston Post and Courier (SC)
“Patti Callahan Henry joins the ranks of Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy.”—Deborah Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Beloved Woman
“Patti Callahan Henry seamlessly combines mystery, family love, and personal journey all in one engrossing tale.”―Diane Chamberlain, USA Today bestselling author of Pretending to Dance
Library Journal
06/01/2017When ER doctor Bonny Blankenship's life spirals out of control, she packs up her troubled teen daughter, invites her BFF and her two young children to join them, and heads to where her most memorable summers were spent, her family's Watersend, SC, vacation home. Piper Blankenship's bad choices have led to her mom dragging her to this small town. Will it be punishment or pleasure? Lainey McKay gets her bestie's urgent request and wants to say yes, but returning to the place where her mom disappeared without a trace years ago is a hard pill for her to swallow. With an eloquent and effective narrative, a realistic continuing theme of unbreakable relationship bonds, and a fantastic multilayered story line of secrets, regrets, and a good dose of teenage drama, this is a solid summer read. VERDICT Fans of Southern fried fiction will devour Henry's (The Idea of Love; The Stories We Tell; And Then I Found You) latest low-country treasure of new beginnings and an old mystery.—Debbie Haupt, St. Charles City-Cty. Lib. Dist., St Peters, MO
Kirkus Reviews
2017-04-17Two best friends find unexpected healing when they return to the beloved beach town where tragedy occurred.Bonny and Lainey spent their childhood summers in Watersend, South Carolina, staying in a house between the river and the ocean. But after Lainey's alcoholic mother disappeared, they never returned. Now an adult, Bonny is looking for a change. She's planning to leave both her job and her husband—that is, until Owen, Lainey's brother, walks into the ER where she's a doctor. Bonny's been in love with him since they were kids, and his presence throws her off so much that a patient dies under her distracted watch. As the hospital investigates her role in the death, Bonny decides to go back to Watersend. She brings along her teenage daughter, Piper, and convinces Lainey to come with her children. Piper is having problems of her own, having failed her freshman year of college and gotten arrested for public intoxication. Although Piper and Lainey are there reluctantly, all three women quickly become entrenched in the town. As Bonny attempts to figure out what direction her life and career should take, Piper falls for a local boy, and Lainey tries to find out just what happened to her mother. It turns out that the local bookshop owner, Mimi, has a knack for helping people discover what they need—and she may know something about Lainey's mother, as well. Henry (The Idea of Love, 2015, etc.) creates a world that feels rich and real—readers can practically hear the rushing river, see the ocean waves, and smell the hydrangea bushes. Some of the plotlines, specifically Bonny's relationship with Owen, don't feel quite fleshed out enough. But that's forgivable, as this is primarily a story about Bonny, Lainey, and Piper, their relationships, and their journeys toward happiness. A quiet, atmospheric look at friendship, forgiveness, and second chances.
My Review Courtesy LibraryJournal
THE BOOKSHOP AT WATER’S END
Patti Callahan Henry
Patti Callahan Henry
Courtesy Library Journal
When ER
doctor Bonny Blankenship's life spirals out of control, she packs up her
troubled teen daughter, invites her BFF and her two young children to join
them, and heads to where her most memorable summers were spent, her family's
Watersend, SC, vacation home. Piper Blankenship's bad choices have led to her
mom dragging her to this small town. Will it be punishment or pleasure? Lainey
McKay gets her bestie's urgent request and wants to say yes, but returning to
the place where her mom disappeared without a trace years ago is a hard pill
for her to swallow. With an eloquent and effective narrative, a realistic
continuing theme of unbreakable relationship bonds, and a fantastic
multilayered story line of secrets, regrets, and a good dose of teenage drama, this
is a solid summer read. VERDICT Fans of Southern fried fiction will devour
Henry's (The Idea of Love; The Stories We Tell; And Then I Found You) latest
low-country treasure of new beginnings and an old mystery.—Debbie Haupt, St.
Charles City-Cty. Lib. Dist., St Peters, MO
Meet Patti:
Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times
Bestselling novelist. She has published nine novels (Losing
the Moon, Where the River
Runs, When Light
Breaks, Betweeen the Tides, The Art of Keeping Secrets,
and Driftwood Summer, The
Perfect Love Song, Coming up for Air and the upcoming And Then I Found You --April 2013, St. Martins Press).
Patti has been hailed as a fresh new voice in southern fiction,
appearing in numerous
magazines (Good Housekeeping; SKIRT; The South; Southern Living, etc..). She has been short-listed for the
Townsend Prize for Fiction. She has been nominated
four different times for the
Southeastern Independent Booksellers Fiction Novel
of the Year. Her work is published in five languages and all novels
are on Brilliance Audio.
Two of her novels were OKRA picks
and Coming up For Air was an Indie Next
choice. Patti is a a frequent speaker
at fundraisers, library
events and book festivals, discussing the importance of
storytelling. Her next novel, AND THEN I FOUND YOU, will be released
on April, 9th,
2013 by St. Martins Press.
Patti Callahan Henry is a full time writer, wife and mother of three living in Mountain Brook,
AL.
I love that the author described this as a love story to bookstores, how awesome is that? great interview Debbie!
ReplyDeletethanks Kindlemom. I loved it!
DeleteThank you sharing the interview, this does sounds like a good read.
ReplyDeleteJenea's Book Obsession
Hi Jenea thanks for the kind words and the visit!
DeleteI do adore this cover
ReplyDeleteMe too
DeleteI just finished listening to this book today. Really well narrated. I LOVED it. It's one I'll want to reread and will be in my 2017 fav's list I am sure.
ReplyDeleteOh wow I can't wait to see how you liked the audible version Kathryn
DeleteIt sounds wonderful. Love the cover :)
ReplyDeleteIt was a study in relationships, very good
Delete