by Sue Monk Kidd, 2005
Got this book out of the little free library in front of Poppie’s house. It’s by the author of The Secret Life of Bees. The story starts when an artist/mother/wife gets called to her childhood home on an island off the coast of South Carolina by a friend of her mother’s. Her mother just cut off her finger, on purpose. So Jessie goes home and immediately falls in love with a monk, Brother Thomas. They have an affair. Her mother cuts off another finger. Jessie’s loving husband comes to the island and is crushed to find out his wife is in love with another man. He leaves in a rage. Jessie stays but between caring for her mother and getting the true story of how her father died – it wasn’t the pipe she gave him for father’s day that sparked a fire and caused his boat to explode – it was that he had a dread disease – Pick’s Disease. The disease is a form of dementia and you forget all of your loved ones. He begged his wife to let him kill himself with poison. She finally agreed. When the full story comes out, Jessie and her mom are finally healed. Jessie goes back to her wonderful husband, Hugh. Her mom can finally stop blaming herself for assisting her husband/Jessie’s dad in his wish to die before he lost his mind.
The setting is neat – a barrier island based on Bull Island but with tourists. Bull Island is uninhabited. The island in the book is called Egret Island and has lots of the same characteristics of Bull Island, the flora and fauna, etc. Would like to go to that part of the USA someday.
Okay book – didn’t really like the character of Jessie – not much sympathy for her, but in the end, she did the right thing. The monastery and the basis for the monastery were a fictitious Mermaid saint, and a Mermaid Chair that is in the monastery. That is where her father chose to die and be blessed by the monk – Father Dominic – to help his wife, a devout Catholic, accept better his suicide. Lots and lots of Mermaid stuff – sold in the stores, a Mermaid festival every year, Jessie painting mermaids, etc. But it was a far-fetched, strange part of the book – all this emphasis on mermaids.