Rescue: A Novel - Hardcover

Shreve, Anita

3.36

16,025 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316120529 ISBN 13: 9780316120524

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2010

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A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage.

Peter Webster is a rookie paramedic when he pulls a young woman out of a car wreck that should have killed her. Sheila Arsenault haunts his thoughts, and despite his misgivings Peter is soon embroiled in an intense love affair--and in Sheila's troubled world.

Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off course, and for the first time in their quiet life together Peter fears for her future. He seeks out the only person who may be able to help Rowan, although Sheila's return is sure to unleash all the questions he has carefully been keeping at bay: Why did a mother leave her family? How did the marriage of two people so deeply in love unravel?

A story about trespass and forgiveness, secrets and the seismic force of the truth, Rescue is a masterful portrayal of a family trying to understand its fractured past and begin again.

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About the Author:

Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of 15 previous novels, including A Change in Altitude; Testimony; The Pilot's Wife, which was a selection of Oprah's Book Club; and The Weight of Water, which was a finalist for England's Orange prize. She lives in Massachusetts.

From AudioFile:

Dennis Holland maintains a steady pace and distinctive subtle accents in the midst of the domestic drama and dramatic EMT rescues that fill this novel. The book opens on Vermont EMT and single father Peter Webster's struggles with his teenage daughter Rowan's drinking and other self-destructive behavior. The story then flashes back to an earlier time and his rescue of Sheila, a woman under the influence who has caused a car accident. Sheila's wild spirit and Boston accent exert a pull on Peter, and the couple falls in love--and marries. Soon enough, things begin to fall apart as Sheila's alcoholism escalates, and a dramatic incident that threatens the infant Rowan's safety brings the marriage to an end. Holland vocalizes the simplest scenarios with compassion as he deftly captures Peter's gentle soul and Sheila's destructive compulsions. A.W. � AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

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