Red Hook Road

It's jarring to hear town and place names mispronounced, along with a Maine accent that sounds fake. Here it's especially unfortunate as this title is in every other way a fabulous story and a superb performance. Two families, one born in Maine, the other cultured intellectuals from New York with ancestral roots (and a great summer house), are brought together by love and tragedy. Narrator Kimberly Farr's performance captures the passion and emotional depth in these struggling characters with a multilayered, nuanced delivery that reflects the thoughtful process the characters undergo as they evolve with their changing roles. Despite a few flaws, this "Vacationland" story is the quintessential escape. D.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

March 29, 2010
Waldman (Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
) delivers a dense story of irreparable loss that tracks two families across four summers. After John Tetherly and Becca Copaken die in a freak car accident an hour after their wedding, their families are left to bridge stark class and cultural divides, and eventually forge deep-rooted bonds thanks to the twin deities of love and music. Becca's family is well off, from New York, and summers in Red Hook, Maine, a small coastal town where John's blue-collar single mother, Jane, cleans houses for a living. They interact, awkwardly, over how to bury the couple, the staging of an anniversary party, and over Jane's adopted niece, whose amazing musical talent makes a connection to Becca's ailing grandfather, a virtuoso violinist, who agrees to give her lessons. Becca's younger sister, Ruthie, a Fulbright scholar, meanwhile, falls in love with John's younger brother, Matt, the first Tetherly to go to college, before he drops out to work at a boatyard and finish restoring his brother's sailboat, which he plans on sailing to the Caribbean. Though Waldman is often guilty of overwriting here, the narrative is well crafted, and each of the characters comes fully to life.