The One True Ocean

August 25, 2003
A woman's effort to seek out her biological father's identity leads her into a hornet's nest of lurid family secrets in Martin's debut, an atmospheric if rather ponderous novel. Artist Jenna McGarry is in mourning following the death of her husband in a car accident. After a period in the doldrums, McGarry decides to rent the house her parents owned on the coast of Maine before they moved to Massachusetts. McGarry's mother, Renee, is startled by her decision, largely because it takes her daughter back to the scene of a family tragedy—when Jenna was seven, her mother's sister, Adeline, committed suicide. As Jenna settles into the old house, she finds traces of her mother's first love—letters, even a photograph. But it is a talk with an old friend that leads her to suspect that her actual father may be long dead. Martin is a smooth, engaging storyteller, and she does a nice job of weaving together the various narrative threads. The flashbacks to Renee's adolescence are clumsy, however, and laced with leaden, dramatic pronouncements. Martin gradually reveals the rivalry between Renee and older, unbalanced Adeline for the attentions of Jenna's father, which comes to a tragic head at the novel's climax. Martin's plotting shows promise, though overwriting weighs down her debut.

October 1, 2003
In Martin's debut novel about an inexplicably dysfunctional family, an old house on the rugged coast of Maine holds many secrets. Chapters alternate between Renee, who gave birth at age 15, and her daughter, Jenna, now 26 and recently widowed. Renee relied on her older sister, Adeline, when she was a new mother, and Jenna's childhood memories have always centered on her beloved aunt. When Jenna is seven, Adeline dies in a mysterious wreck, her car swerving into the ocean, and Renee and her daughter abruptly move away. After her husband dies, Jenna returns to the family home and slowly begins to fit together the buried pieces of her mother and aunt's fractured relationship. Tapping into long-hidden family archives and the memories of neighbors, she eventually comprehends the jealousy and miscommunication that drove the sisters apart--all the "clouded layers" of guilt and regret. Martin's perceptive voice calls up moments in a young widow's life that remain clearly etched in her readers' minds, adding a unique ingredient to the usual romantic suspense novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)