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WHEN LIGHT BREAKS by Patti Callahan Henry
On Sale: May 2nd, 2006
Paperback
304 pages
ISBN: 0451218345
Garnering comparisons to Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy, Patti Callahan Henry has woven her lyrical Southern voice throughout the Lowcountry landscape. Now as tow women from opposite sides of the sea meet, a tale unfolds that will draw you into the heart's remembrances and the compelling power of story.
Patti Callahan Henry is the National Bestselling author of three novels with Penguin/NAL. (Losing the Moon, Where the River Runs, When Light Breaks).
Patti grew up as a Minister's daughter, learning early how storytelling effects our lives. She grew up spending her summers on Cape Cod where she began her love affair with the beach, ocean, tides and nature of the coast. Moving south at the tender age of twelve, she found solace in books and stories. While attending Auburn University, she met a southern boy who later proposed on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, next to a historic lighthouse overlooking the Sound. After earning her Master's degree in Child Health, Patti worked as a Clinical Nurse Specialist until her first child was born.
Today Patti is hailed as a fresh new voice in southern fiction. She has been short-listed for the Townsend Prize for Fiction and has been nominated for the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Fiction Novel of the Year. She is a frequent speaker at luncheons, book clubs and women's groups where she discusses the importance of storytelling and anything else they want to talk about.
Patti is a full time writer, wife and mother living with her husband and three children outside Atlanta on the Chattahoochee River where she is working on her fourth novel.
"Should an old woman's story change the present?" Kara Larson asks in WHEN LIGHT BREAKS. The power of storytelling is at the heart of Patti Callahan Henry's new novel, and as Kara discovers, stories are sometimes more than simply entertaining tales.
Returning to the Carolina Lowcountry (also the setting for her novels LOSING THE MOON and WHERE THE RIVER RUNS), Henry brings together two women from different generations who share a common bond: each lost her first love. For one of these women, memories are all that remain. But for the other, who's about to make a life-altering decision, there is the possibility of a second chance --- if she has the courage to take it.
Twenty-seven-year-old Kara lives in her childhood home with her widowed father in the small town of Palmetto Pointe, South Carolina, where jasmine scents the air and Spanish moss drapes the stately oaks that line Main Street. Ever the good girl, Kara has always done the things other people believe are right for her --- including setting aside her desire to become a photographer in favor of a more "suitable" job, and becoming engaged to professional golfer Peyton Ellers.
The turning point in Kara's well-ordered life comes when she is assigned to visit a resident at a local nursing home. Six hours behind on her volunteer quota for the Palmetto Pointe Junior Society, Kara views it as another task to be completed and crossed off her to-do list…until she meets Maeve Mahoney. Ninety-six-year-old Maeve begins to tell Kara a story about the boy she loved and lost in Ireland more than eight decades earlier. During their first visit she also asks Kara if the man she is marrying is her first love, sending Kara on her own memory-laden trip into the past.
Jack Sullivan was the boy next door and Kara's first love, until the morning 13 years ago when his mother spirited away her two sons to escape an abusive husband. Maeve's question makes Kara, who is set to marry Peyton in two months, realize that she has never fully put the past --- and her long-buried feelings for Jack --- to rest. Kara's curiosity is piqued about the direction Jack's life might have taken, and a cursory search reveals that he is a songwriter for a band called the Unknown Souls.
Kara, a PGA TOUR manager, organizes golf tournaments and events with the same precision with which she orchestrates her life. In addition to planning a lavish wedding for 400 guests, she's overseeing a benefit gala for the first-ever Palmetto Pointe Open. When the band scheduled to play at the event cancels, Kara thinks of Jack and makes a solo road trip to Savannah to hear the Unknown Souls in concert --- and to renew her acquaintance with Jack.
As Kara becomes increasingly intrigued by the rambling narrative Maeve unfolds over the course of their visits --- a true story intertwined with Irish legend --- she gradually comes to recognize that she found her future 13 years ago. And along with a rekindling of her romance with Jack, Maeve's story leads Kara to finally start living her life the way she wants.
WHEN LIGHT BREAKS is a multi-faceted tale. Henry (who is of Irish descent) enhances the love-triangle storyline with an Emerald Isle myth, a sultry Southern setting, dashes of humor, and compellingly drawn characters. "All anyone ever wants to do is get to the end of the story," Maeve tells Kara. "It is not about how it ends; it is about the journey. The full story. You have to know the full story to care about or know the ending." Take heed of Maeve's advice. Savoring the details will make the journey through the pages of WHEN LIGHT BREAKS all the more enjoyable.
--- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna
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May 12, 2006
Bookreporter.com contributing writer Shannon McKenna interviewed Patti Callahan Henry, author of LOSING THE MOON, WHERE THE RIVER RUNS, and the newly released WHEN LIGHT BREAKS. In this interview, Henry characterizes writing a novel as an instinctual journey with no guarantees, and explains the basis for her love and belief in the power of storytelling. She also describes her affinity for the South Carolina Lowcountry and conveys what she hopes readers will take away from her books.
Bookreporter.com: What first sparked the idea for the storyline of WHEN LIGHT BREAKS?
Patti Callahan Henry: After the publication of my first novel, I took a long, hard look at why I was writing. I wanted to know what drove me to the page every day and I discovered that a large part of the reason I write is because I believe in the power of story. So, I decided that this novel would be about exactly the reason I write: the power of story. I wanted one woman’s story and life to change or influence another woman’s life in a positive direction. I believe the heart and mind communicate through reason and intellect, but the heart communicates through story.
BRC: Kara becomes intrigued with the story Maeve tells her about the boy she loved and lost in Ireland, which Kara later finds out is a blending of truth and legend. What appealed to you about incorporating aspects of Irish history and culture into the story?
PCH: The Irish culture is incredibly rich in myth and legend. Because this novel was about the ability of story to change a life, I wanted to blur the line between story and literal life, and the rich storytelling culture of Ireland was a perfect fit. One of the many themes in Irish legend is the presence of the sacred in ordinary daily life, and this is what I wanted to convey to, and for Kara through an Irish storyteller.
BRC: Kara works for the PGA TOUR and is engaged to a professional golfer, and sprinkled throughout the story are references to the game. Do you golf? If not, how did you research the aspects you needed to include in the story?
PCH: I don't golf, but my husband is an avid golfer as are both my sons. I live some of the golf life with my boys, and for the remainder, I convinced an employee of the PGA TOUR to tell me about her job. I went on site to the PGA TOUR East Lake Tournament and interviewed the amazing people who run these tournaments. Then, of course, I had my husband read the novel and make sure I didn't make a huge mistake (like knowing the difference between a birdie and a bogey.)
BRC: Amateur photographer Kara says that one of the reasons she likes to take pictures is “to keep the memories in order.” Are you a photography buff? Are your personal photo albums organized?
PCH: I am only a photography buff in my admiration of those who can take that great picture that captures a moment in time. One of my dearest friends is an incredibly gifted photographer, and I have always envied and admired this talent. I collect photographs of both my family life and particular photographs that evoke emotion, whether that be a scene or a person. My personal photo albums organized? Not so much --- but it is a goal. Really, it is.
BRC: Do you have a favorite scene in WHEN LIGHT BREAKS? How does this particular scene illuminate the story?
PCH: WHEN LIGHT BREAKS was such a joy to write that I have a very hard time choosing a particular scene that I just love. But if forced --- one of my favorites is the first time Kara and Maeve meet. I love the hints and clues Maeve drops into Kara’s life so the reader knows something good is coming --- something life changing that even Kara cannot see. I also adore the scene where Kara and Jack see each other after fifteen years.
BRC: In WHEN LIGHT BREAKS Maeve’s granddaughter remarks about her grandmother, “She loves to tell stories. She believes they guide and define our lives.” Do you believe stories have the power to guide and define people’s lives?
PCH: I do believe story (or good story) has the power to guide and define our lives. The power of story lies within its myriad ways to change us, or our outlook.
BRC: WHEN LIGHT BREAKS is set in the South Carolina Lowcountry, as were your previous novels. What is it about this setting that makes for great storytelling? What do you think appeals to readers about Southern settings?
PCH: I am drawn to this area for its raw, natural, unspoiled beauty. In a world of schedules, cell phones, Internet, and material acquisition, the Lowcountry reminds me of true beauty, true calm. It is a place where my spirits seem to rest and the family slows down. It is a lush, wild place where characters and readers can settle into a good story.
BRC: When did your affinity for storytelling begin? What made you take that initial leap and begin writing your first novel?
PCH: I grew up with my nose in a book and have always been fascinated with beautifully told stories. I also grew up as a preacher’s daughter, which is nothing more than listening to the same truth being told over and over in story. I slowly came to realize the power was not in the lecture, but the well-told story. My daughter is the one who reminded me I wanted to write novels. When she was six years old she told me she wanted to be a writer of books and this spurned me on to my original childhood dream.
BRC: Reviewers have compared your novels to the works of Anne Rivers Siddons, Pat Conroy, Mary Alice Monroe, and Patricia Gaffney. What is it like to join the ranks of such illustrious writers?
PCH: I am humbled and grateful to be compared to such outstanding writers. They are masters at crafting sentences rich in description and meaning. I can only hope that the comparisons arise from the deeper, shared truths we each explore in our novels. Or I can only hope they aren't offended.
BRC: Why do you think your books have struck such a chord with readers? WHEN LIGHT BREAKS is a work of fiction meant to entertain, but is there something more you hope readers will take away from the book?
PCH: Yes, of course I always hope that readers take away something more from my work. What is amazing to me is that each reader will take something different from each novel I've written. I hope the character's journey touches the reader's heart, makes them look at their own heart's desires, and then they can ask themselves what they really want in life aside from other's expectations. I also hope that readers take whatever they might need from the novel. I love when a reader is struck by a theme or meaning that I, even as the writer, hadn't realized was deep inside the story.
BRC: With the publication of WHEN LIGHT BREAKS, you now have three novels to your credit. Has the process evolved or changed for you in any way with the writing of each subsequent book?
PCH: The process of writing each novel has not changed that much since my first novel. I once heard that writers must always be willing to become beginners over and over again. And this is true. With each novel, I must start over, begin again. Somehow, between each novel, I forget how to write a book, but I start the same way each time: with a theme or “what if” and then watch the story evolve from there. I wish I had a scientific method, a more sure way to write, but it is just a step by step, word by word, page by page journey where I don't always see what is around the corner and there are no guarantees I am headed in the right direction.
BRC: WHEN LIGHT BREAKS will make for a terrific literary summer escape. What books will you be reading this summer?
PCH: SAVANNAH BREEZE by Mary Kay Andrews; FULL OF GRACE by Dorothea Benton Frank; TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee (I want to reread this book before I read her new biography); THE BEACH HOUSE by Mary Alice Monroe (I want to reread this before the sequel, SWIMMING LESSONS, is released next year); and then my just-finished rough draft of BETWEEN THE TIDES so I can clean it up and send it off to the presses.
BRC: What are you working on now, and when can readers expect to see it?
PCH: I am finishing a book called BETWEEN THE TIDES. It is a novel I wrote four years ago and have now come back to revisit and rewrite. It is the story of 35-year-old Catherine Leary. When her Southern Literature Professor Father passes away, he has one request for his only child: to scatter his ashes in the only site Catherine never wants to see again --- the Seaboro River in South Carolina, a place she believes she forced her family to leave when she was 12 years old. Now, a year after her Dad's death, Catherine has still not fulfilled his last wish, but when her Dad's colleague hints that her dad often returned to this town of her childhood, she finally returns to Seaboro on a poignant journey full of family secrets, lasting love and self-discovery as she uncovers the true reason her family left their beloved Lowcountry town. Readers can expect to see it on the shelves in May 2007.
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Chapter One
I was surrounded by water just as I was surrounded by memories. I was born here in the South Carolina Lowcountry, raised first by both my parents, then just my daddy. My hometown, Palmetto Pointe, was a place encircled by river, estuary, marsh and ocean all at once; bodies of water cushioning us like the earth's pillow.
One silver dawn in early March, I stood on the dock overlooking the river shrouded in early morning mist; the hummocks and spartina blended together in the gray-silver dawn. The oyster shell mounds glowed in the rising sun like pearlized and ragged pieces of earth outlining the river. I'd come earlier than usual for my morning run. The sound of my older sister Deirdre's crying had come through the bedroom wall of our family home to join my own spinning and twisting thoughts, and sleep was as elusive as the no'seeums—the almost invisible biting bugs—I swatted at during a summer day.
I'd been able to hear Deirdre cry through the walls since I was nine years old, since Mama died. I don't think she ever understood I could hear her; not even now that she was grown and had come home to escape another too lonely night apart from her husband, Bill, from whom she'd separated. Our family, the Larson's, had learned to hide such emotional displays—they were not for public show like the family portraits or the Waterford Lismore collection. Our feelings were as well hidden as the family silver during the war of "Northern Aggression".
I extended my arms over my head, leaned down stretching my hamstrings in anticipation of running my usual three miles. A school of menhaden fluttered below the surface of the water like butterflies under silk fabric. The tide was low, yet rushing in from the ocean to cover the mud banks, to give shelter to the crabs scurrying in the morning dawn. The ebb and flow of my memories weren't nearly as reliable as these tides. On some days I was flooded with remembering and on others, I was as empty as the marsh at extreme low tide. But that morning, like the flotsam that rises to the top of the waves and is flung onto the beach after a storm as strong as my sister's grief, a very particular day returned to me as the sun broke free from behind a low, flat cloud. My heart opened to an old memory.
I was thirteen years old.
It had been almost four years since Mama—the angelic Margarite Larson—had died. She'd willingly stopped treatment for her cancer and she'd left our family. She'd chosen death over family.
So I'd run away from home. I'd packed my purple suitcase, walked across the front lawn to the Sullivan's house next door, then stood on the front porch. I set my bag down, knocked on the door with all the assurance a thirteen year old could muster on a blistering August afternoon when sweat was dripping down her forehead. Mrs. Sullivan answered the door, smiled at me. "Hey there, Ms. Kara. How are you this summer day?" Her smile lit up the entire front porch like a million fireflies.
I patted my suitcase, lifted my chin. "You're my new family," I said, nodded for an exclamation point.
Mrs. Sullivan took me in her arms, wrapped me tight and allowed me to believe my proclamation with her pure acceptance. The sharp scent of paint-thinner filled my nose and I knew she'd been working on her oil paintings. She led me into the house, put up her paintbrushes, and cooked me a grilled cheese sandwich dripping in butter. Then she brushed my hair and sang me a song about a bridge over troubled waters.
"Now, honey, tell Mrs. Sullivan why you would want to run away from your beautiful home."
I turned to her and shook my head. "It's just terrible. Daddy has changed too much. His face is always hard and stern." I scrunched my face up. "Like this."
Mrs. Sullivan laughed, squeezed my cheeks.
"He talks all low and monotone. He doesn't run through the rain with me anymore, or let me get extra sprinkles on my ice cream cone. He won't let me wear shoes in the house or get sand in the cuff of my jeans or even bring home a star-fish for my dresser—says they smell. I've been thinking that the real Daddy will come back—that he's not really what everyone calls him, grumpy and moody—but I am assuming that four years is as long as I should wait for the real Daddy to come back. And he hasn't. So—here I am."
The kitchen screen door slammed and we both turned to her son, Jack, who came running through the doorway, sand flying out of the cuffs of his pants, shoes on his feet. "Hey, whatcha doing here?" he said to me, threw his baseball cap on the kitchen table. I was stunned when no one yelled at him to put his hat in its proper place.
"I ran away," I said, hit my palm on the table for emphasis.
"Oh, you did?" He looked at his Mom, blew a large Bazooka bubble. "Must've taken you a day or two to run this far."
Mrs. Sullivan laughed and it felt like a betrayal. I wanted to give a smart answer to Jack Sullivan with his dirty face and bubble gum lips, but tears found their way into my throat, then rose to my nose and finally my eyes. I turned away. I'd known Jack my entire life; our birthdays were three days apart, and he'd never made me cry—except that time he'd thrown me in the river and I'd sliced my feet on the oyster bed.
He lifted his hands in the air. "Oh, I was only joking, Kara. Only joking. You didn't really run away, did you?"
I nodded. "My mama's gone and now Daddy is too."
Jack dropped the baseball glove I hadn't seen in his left hand—it was so much a part of him that I didn't even notice it. "What? Your daddy…" he said.
Mrs. Sullivan held up her hand. "No, she just means he's changed."
"At least he's around," Jack said.
I glanced at Mrs. Sullivan. Pain flew across her face like a shooting star. I flinched as I thought of her husband who came and went as the alcohol allowed.
"He might be around, Jack Sullivan," I said, "but he's a different man. My real daddy is gone." I straightened in my chair.
Jack sat down at the table with his mother and me, took a bite of my sandwich, then punched my shoulder lightly. "You wanna go help me find a conch shell for my summer project? I have to make a musical instrument out of something in nature."
I jumped up. "Sure." Then I turned to Mrs. Sullivan. "What time do we need to be getting home for dinner?" In my home, punctuality was a god to honor at all costs and I assumed it was the same here.
Mrs. Sullivan stood, drew me in her embrace again. "Honey, you need to be at your own home by dark."
"No." I didn't yell this or even have a fit, just stated the fact.
She nodded. "This family is a big enough mess without adding kidnapping to its list of charges."
I shook my head. "Well, I'll find somewhere else to live then."
"No, you won't," she said, pulled me closer. "Because you can come here whenever you want and because if your Daddy lost one more thing he loved, he'd be destroyed for sure."
And I knew this was true. Guilt washed over me, and it tasted like the time I'd been slammed down by an unexpected wave, biting my tongue and swallowing more sea water than I'd thought possible.
I followed Jack Sullivan out the door and into the pre-twilight evening of summer. This was the time of day when I wondered what had happened to the day, where it had gone. Had I used up the sunlight, guzzled the day like one should during the summer? Had I done everything…right?
I caught up to Jack, skipped next to him; he looked at me and stopped.
"What?" I squinted at him against the fading sun, pink and periwinkle in the edges of the clouds.
"Do you really want to run away from home?" he asked.
"Yes, I do," I said, surer than I'd ever been.
He touched the bottom edges of my dark wavy hair. This was something he'd never done—touched me in a gentle way like I was a fragile shell that would fracture under his hands. He twisted a curl around his finger and I felt it all the way to the inside of my head, through my scalp—a tingling of a sort I hadn't known existed, like electricity, but deeper and wider and less jolting.
Then he let go, looked at me. "Why would you leave? You have the best family I've ever met."
"Because it's not the same anymore, at all. Mama's gone and now it seems Daddy is too. Deirdre is mad all the time and Brian is too busy with his friends to notice me. So, it's time for me to go."
I thought Jack would laugh, but he didn't. He stared straight ahead, looking at me but not. His eyes were gazing almost through me. "Just because your family changes doesn't mean you can leave them. I wish my dad would change…"
And it was right there, after he touched the edges of my hair, as he spoke of his dad with a color and depth to his eyes I'd never seen before, that I knew the need for his touch. Not the touch I'd felt with him wrestling in the ocean or shoving me off the dock into the river, but a different kind that at thirteen years old I could not define. A kind of touch I didn't know how to ask for and didn't know how to give. But I tried.
I held out my left hand; it wavered in the air before I knew what to do with it. Then I reached up and touched his cheek; my palm against his skin, my thumb ran over to his top lip, stopped. He stood still, stiller than the snow-white egrets on the marsh, which looked like statues. Then he reached up and put his hand on top of mine. Fear—the kind that makes your stomach loose like you're on a dropping plane—overcame me; fear that he'd remove my hand.
But he didn't; he closed his eyes and let our hands stay there—together. In the next second, he opened his eyes and leaned toward me, dropped his forehead onto mine. Our noses touched, then our lips. It was my first kiss and more gentle and kind than I had expected after watching Spin-the-Bottle at our middle-school parties. It lasted only a moment, a split second of time that could repeat itself over and over if I allowed it, like the waves coming one after the other even if you weren't watching.
Neither one of us said a word; we stood back and stared at each other as if we'd just met, as if we'd just discovered something so new and strange that we didn't know what to call it.
We turned together and walked toward the sand dunes, over the footbridge covering the sandburs, which dug themselves into your bare feet and stung worse than a bee. When we reached the beach, we sat and watched the sun disappear in a hundred colors and patterns of light below the horizon.
I lay on my back and he sank down next to me. Instinctively, as we'd done a hundred times, we made silent snow angels in the sand, brushing our arms back and forth, allowing our fingertips to graze against each other. We lay like that in silence, knowing the game we were playing: the first one to see a star in the disappearing day won. I focused on the sky…wanting to find it, wanting to wish upon it. Then a small speck rose above me—appearing like it always did, as if it had always been there, but I hadn't paid enough attention. Usually I hollered when I won this game, but this time I whispered. "There it is."
Jack touched my elbow. "I see it."
"Did you see it first?" I whispered.
"Nah. You win. Come on, we best get to dinner or we'll be grounded for sure."
And I knew that for the first time, he'd let me win the game, and this was the one fact, beyond the kiss or the brush of his fingertips, that let me know he loved me. Yes, he most definitely loved me. And I loved him.
I stood, and he took my hand inside his and I thought how perfectly it fit, custom-made for me, like one of Daddy's tailored suits from the seamstress on Magnolia Street. Jack glanced at me with a question on his face. I smiled at him and immersed myself in the new openness I felt below my breastbone; maybe, just maybe this emotion would fill some of the empty space where Mama's absence ached.
My definition of love did not, then, extend beyond familial devotion, so when I felt the opening, the possibility of another kind of love—my heart stretched as if it had been taking a thirteen year nap, and it was just beginning to fully awaken.
I pondered this feeling for weeks and months afterwards, wondering why it had changed between this boy and me, this boy from next door whom I'd known ever since I could remember. Had I always loved him or did I just miss my mama and want his?
Even now, at twenty-seven years old, I couldn't answer that question, but thankfully it didn't matter anymore. Jack was gone and had been for a very long time. I now understood true love, lasting love—not just adolescent angst and want, not the kind of love that would leave me like Mama had. I was comfortable in my world, one I did not need to run away from.
Excerpted from When Light Breaks © Copyright 2006 by Patti Callahan Henry. Reprinted with permission by Penguin/NAL. All rights reserved.
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