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MAD DASH
Patricia Gaffney
Three Rivers Press
Fiction
Hardcover: 0307382117
Paperback: 9780307382122
Mrs. Bender, one of the characters in Patricia Gaffney’s MAD DASH, sums
it up when she asks the heroine, Dash Bateman, how many years she’s been
married. Dash answers, “Almost twenty years,” and Mrs. Bender replies,
“Oh, yes, well, that’s when it starts to get pretty serious, isn’t
it?”
Told first through the voice of Dash, and then from her husband Andrew’s
point of view, this is a story about a marriage that unravels for a time. It is
not one of the “big issues” of life that begins the derailing, but
a small one. One evening, as Dash and Andrew return home, they find a dog on their
doorstep. Is she alive? As they work together to call the vet and revitalize the
puppy, the incident takes on a different tone. Dash, who is tired of loss and
giving things up, wants to keep the puppy. After losing her mother six months
earlier and then sending their daughter off to college, Dash is ready to embrace
this new pet. Andrew, however, wishes to give the dog away.
Dash, who has a good career as a portrait photographer, walks out over the disagreement
and goes to her photography studio. This act of leaving starts a chain reaction
for the couple. Dash decides to move down to their cabin in Virginia. While sorting
herself out, she spends time with Cottie and Shevlin Bender. Shevlin is the handyman
who the Batemans have hired to help maintain the cabin. Cottie and Shevlin have
been married for 40 years, and Cottie has just come through heart surgery. The
two women talk about life, and Dash hears how love and marriage has worked for
them.
Andrew’s world is also full of challenges. An Associate Professor of History
at Mason-Dixon College, he is offered an opportunity to move up in his career.
Full professorship and consideration as the next department chair are his, if
he will contribute a chapter to another professor’s book. He has already
disappointed his father by choosing to become a teacher instead of a lawyer. As
Andrew faces his father’s aging and ailing health, he learns about his dad’s
lost dreams. Will he take the necessary steps? Does he even want to do this?
Gaffney’s portrayal of Dash and Andrew provides readers with the integral
sounds, personal gestures and small words of a relationship. We are given an intimate
view from both perspectives as they experience moments of annoyance, sadness and
laughter. This story resonates for anyone who has been in a long-term relationship,
through all the ups and downs.
The author’s trademark humor is exemplary in MAD DASH. Her ability to write
opposing points of view over the same relationship creates empathy for both characters
and is brilliantly executed.
--- Reviewed by Jennifer McCord
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