Harper Press, $38.99
If you want an easy, modern read about picking your way through life’s inevitable obstacles, The oap of True Places is it. Zee Finch has overcome a complicated past to create a perfect life for herself. She is part of a successful psychology practice in Boston and is engaged to eligible bachelor Michael.
The fact that she’s reluctant to even talk about their wedding might point the reader in the direction of all not being well beneath the surface, but Zee herself is a little slow to come to that realisation. What turns her life on its head is the suicide of one of her patients. Zee is no stranger to suicide, her mother having been a casualty of it, and yet she starts to spin out.
Abandoning her job and her boyfriend, she heads back to her home town of Salem only to find that her father’s Parkinson’s disease is galloping out of control along with just about everything else.
The past soon starts to draw Zee back into its clutches but as she continues to unravel, it emerges that she’s not retracing old steps – she’s forging new ones. It’s all part of learning how to navigate life without a map. Salem, most famous for its witch hunts in the 17th century, makes a captivating backdrop for this story.
Also one of the most significant seaports in early America, Brunonia Barry paints a vibrant picture of this still-thriving historic tourist town employing many a navigational motif. Like Zee, she grew up in Salem but abandoned it for Hollywood for many years only to be guided back there by the stars, like an old-fashioned sailor, to see it more recently through different eyes. She is now very happily staying put.
Going backwards is sometimes the only way of going forward, says the author of the earlier bestseller The Lace Reader. Life is not always what you expect, and sometimes it’s not until you are forced to take a different turn that you find your true course.
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