Winter Haven by Athol Dickson, Reviewed
April 25, 2008
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Athol Dickson’s university-level training in painting, sculpture, and architecture was followed by a long career as an architect then his decision several years ago to devote full time to writing.
Athol Dickson’s writing has been favorably compared to the work of Octavia Butler
(Publisher’s Weekly), Daphne du Maurier (Cindy Crosby, FaithfulReader.com) and FlanneryO’Connor (The New York Times).
His They Shall See God was a Christy Award finalist and his River Rising was a Christy Award winner, selected as one of the Booklist Top Ten Christian Novels of 2006 and a finalist for Christianity Today’s Best Novel of 2006.
He and his wife, Sue, live in Southern California. Visit AtholDickson.com for more information.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Boys who never age, giants lost in time, mist that never rises, questions never asked…on the most remote of islands off the coast of Maine, history haunts the present and Vera Gamble wrestles with a past that will not yield. Will she find refuge there, or will her ghosts prevail on…Winter Haven
Eleven years ago, Vera Gamble’s brother left their house never to be seen again. Until the day Vera gets a phone call that his body has been found…washed ashore in the tiny island town of Winter Haven, Maine. His only surviving kin, Vera travels north to claim the body…and finds herself tumbling into a tangled mystery. Her brother hasn’t aged a day since last she saw him.
Determined to uncover what happened in those lost years, Vera soon discovers there are other secrets lurking in this isolated town. But Winter Haven’s murky past now seems bound to come to light as one woman seeks the undeniable and flooding light of truth.
Sally Says:
Oh.
My.
Word.
This book blew me away, almost from the first page. Right away it had this rich, gothic feel to it, and I knew there was going to be some deep mystery I wouldn’t be able to solve.
Winter Haven is a fantastic read, whether you’re a writer or a bookworm. There’s so much to talk about in this book, so much that makes your head spin and piques your curiosity. It’s a prime example of a pageturner, yet it has the feel of a literary classic.
If you’re a writer, you need to read this book — it’s a study in so many things we writers should be doing. For example, writers are often told to make the setting another character, and Athol does that incredibly well. Without the island of Winter Haven, there is no story, no book. The plot and characters can’t exist without the richness of the setting.
Another thing writers shouldn’t do is dump loads of backstory. That’s a struggle for many of us. We think our readers need to know our characters’ pasts because that’s influencing the way they’re acting now. Athol handles this perfectly. The characters’ pasts play heavily into the plot of this book, but he includes just the teensiest bit of back story in the perfect manner at the perfect time. What it does is create suspense, and we assume things to be one way when we find out so much later that they are the total opposite.
If there’s one flaw in the book, I felt it was in the ending. There was a part of the climax that I just didn’t buy. I can’t say what it was because it would give too much away, but I did wish the author had chosen a different twist on that one part of the ending. Either way, I still found Winter Haven a fantabulous read, one of the very best I’ve read this year. When I finished the book, I turned back to chapter one and started reading all over again.
Can’t remember the last time I’ve done that.
A Moment of Silence, Please
April 23, 2008
We are out of ketchup.
We have been out of ketchup for three days — three very long, very unred days.
Somehow I will survive.