Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea

January 15, 2012
In this debut coming-of-age novel, Florine Gilham, the young daughter of a lobsterman, and his free-spirited wife, learn the difficult lesson that life is mostly "getting on with it." It is the summer of 1963 on The Point, an isolated Maine fishing village. Florine will soon begin seventh grade. Leeman, her father, works his boat. Carlie, her adored mother, waits tables at the Lobster Shack. It's a summer like any other, until Carlie disappears while vacationing. Carlie loves her husband, but he prefers the sea to traveling, and so Carlie's annual getaway with her best friend, Patty, has become a tradition. Now, with Leeman able to climb out of the bottle only long enough to provide confused support, Florine rages against the mystery of her mother's disappearance. Florine's troubles grow when Stella, a clerk in the local general store and her father's high school sweetheart, moves to comfort Leeman. Florine responds angrily, so much so that her father agrees to let her live with Grand, her grandmother and beloved community matriarch. Florine also has Buddy, Glen and Dottie, her adventurous contemporaries. The novel chronicles Florine's life from prepubescence through high school, and her transformation from gangling precocious girl to a sexually aware, troubled young woman. Gradually, Florine learns about her mother's abusive childhood, her father's tortured anguish over her disappearance and his profound sense of helplessness. It is only Grand's presence, her uncritical and accepting love, that provide Florine the refuge she needs to keep her sanity. Grand is beautifully, empathetically, realistically drawn. Florine is self-aware, compassionately sketched with a perceptive measure of immaturity as she stumbles toward reconciliation with the world only to again be derailed by tragedy. Rogers writes with a superb sense of place and period, delving deftly into true-to-life responses to unexplained loss. The novel's resolution is deeply moving, albeit one perhaps better served by an altered sequence of events. A realistic and resonate coming-of-age novel, chronicling a journey from grief to acceptance.

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January 1, 2012

It's summer 1963, and Florine Gilham is 12 years old. Life in her small Maine town is mostly good. Even being grounded after a firecracker prank turned into a small house fire, she gets the benefit of extra time with her mother and grandmother. That time becomes precious when her mother suddenly disappears. Florine and her lobster fisherman father find their world tossed into confusion and loss. Did her mother run away, or is she dead? Will they ever find out? Caught in limbo but sustained by friends and her grandmother, Florine carves her own path to adulthood. She'll sustain more losses and get diverted by the wrong man, but she will hold true to the knowledge of love she has been bequeathed by her parents. VERDICT Readers who enjoy coming-of-age tales and small-town stories will appreciate this well-crafted debut novel that tugs at the heart without falling into sentimentality. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/11.]--Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2012
When preteen Florine Gilham's mother disappears one summer without a trace, she doubts she'll ever feel normal again, and, unfortunately, her lobster-fisherman father is himself too broken up to advise Florinenewly pitied, perennially misunderstoodin navigating these rough seas. Luckily, there's Grand, her father's mother, who lectures and loves heartily, to teach her to make bread, knit sweaters, and try to accept her father's new search for happiness. This debut, coming-of-age novel sees Florine feistily and with difficulty grow into her adulthood, propped up by a handful of friends and loved ones who make both tragic exits and redemptive reappearances but more often than not choosing to rely on herself. Told in plain language and set in 1960s coastal Maine, the novel is rich in landscape and character, with regional dialect and phrases that will tip many mouths into grins despite its morose, hardened young heroine.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)