Rescue (Shreve)

Rescue
Anita Shreve, 2010
Little, Brown & Co.
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316020725

Summary
A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma—streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast.

Can you ever really save another person? Eighteen years later, Sheila is long gone and Peter is raising their daughter, Rowan, alone. But Rowan is veering dangerously off track, and for the first time in their ordered existence together, Webster fears for her future. His work shows him daily every danger the world contains, how wrong everything can go in a second. All the love a father can give a daughter is suddenly not enough.

Sheila's sudden return may be a godsend—or it may be exactly the wrong moment for a lifetime of questions and anger and longing to surface anew. What tore a young family apart? Is there even worse damage ahead? The questions lifted up in Anita Shreve's utterly enthralling new novel are deep and lasting, and this is a novel that could only have been written by a master of the human heart. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1946
• Raised—Dedham, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A. Tufts University
• Awards—PEN/L.L. Winship Award; O. Henry Prize
• Currently—lives in Longmeadow, Massachusetts


Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of nearly 20 books—including two works of nonfiction and 17 of fiction. Her novels include, most recently, Stella Bain (2013), as well as The Weight of Water (1997), a finalist for England's Orange prize; The Pilot's Wife (1998), a selection of Oprah's Book Club; All He Even Wanted (2003), Body Surfing (2007); Testimony (2008); A Change in Altitude (2010). She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)

More
For many readers, the appeal of Anita Shreve’s novels is their ability to combine all of the escapist elements of a good beach read with the kind of thoughtful complexity not generally associated with romantic fiction. Shreve’s books are loaded with enough adultery, eroticism, and passion to make anyone keep flipping the pages, but the writer whom People magazine once dubbed a “master storyteller” is also concerned with the complexities of her characters’ motivations, relationships, and lives.

Shreve’s novels draw on her diverse experiences as a teacher and journalist: she began writing fiction while teaching high school, and was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1975 for her story, "Past the Island, Drifting." She then spent several years working as a journalist in Africa, and later returned to the States to raise her children. In the 1980s, she wrote about women’s issues, which resulted in two nonfiction books—Remaking Motherhood and Women Together, Women Alone—before breaking into mainstream fiction with Eden Close in 1989.

This interest in women’s lives—their struggles and success, families and friendships—informs all of Shreve’s fiction. The combination of her journalist’s eye for detail and her literary ear for the telling turn of phrase mean that Shreve can spin a story that is dense, atmospheric, and believable. Shreve incorporates the pull of the sea—the inexorable tides, the unpredictable surf—into her characters’ lives the way Willa Cather worked the beauty and wildness of the Midwestern plains into her fiction. In Fortune’s Rocks and The Weight of Water, the sea becomes a character itself, evocative and ultimately consuming. In Sea Glass, Shreve takes the metaphor as far as she can, where characters are tested again and again, only to emerge stronger by surviving the ravages of life.

A domestic sensualist, Shreve makes use of the emblems of household life to a high degree, letting a home tell its stories just as much as its inhabitants do, and even recycling the same house through different books and periods of time, giving it a sort of palimpsest effect, in which old stories burn through the newer ones, creating a historical montage. "A house with any kind of age will have dozens of stories to tell," she says. "I suppose if a novelist could live long enough, one could base an entire oeuvre on the lives that weave in and out of an antique house."

Shreve’s work is sometimes categorized as "women’s fiction," because of her focus on women’s sensibilties and plights. But her evocative and precise language and imagery take her beyond category fiction, and moderate the vein of sentimen-tality which threads through her books. Moreover, her kaleidoscopic view of history, her iron grip on the details and detritus of 19th-century life (which she sometimes inter-sperses with a 20th-century story), and her uncanny ability to replicate 19th-century dialogue without sounding fusty or fussy, make for novels that that are always absorbing and often riveting. If she has a flaw, it is that her imagery is sometimes too cinematic, but one can hardly fault her for that: after all, the call of Hollywood is surely as strong as the call of the sea for a writer as talented as Shreve. (Adapted from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Shreve gets deep inside these characters, and her insights draw us into their lives…The relationship between the secretive, hard-drinking, oddly vulnerable Sheila and the down-to-earth small-town hero is wonderfully etched. Shreve creates a little world, peoples it with believable characters, and puts them through agonizing and joyful moments without a false note or a dissonant figure of speech.
Brigitte Weeks - Washington Post


Rescue is Shreve at her best....Shreve knows love may be intense, life-changing and passionate, but it is never enough. Her characters bruise each other as much as they comfort each other.... Rescue is full of themes Shreve loves: How a moment can change a life; loss and love; forgiveness and pain.
Mary Foster - Associated Press


A paramedic and the troubled young beauty he saves propel Shreve's engrossing latest...With the insistent thrum of life-and-death EMT calls as background, Shreve's vividly told tale captures the deep-seated fears of mortality and loneliness that can drive us to test the bounds of family and forgiveness.
Joanna Powell - People


In Shreve's smooth if unsurprising latest (after A Change in Altitude), EMT Peter Webster is drawn to a woman he rescues at the scene of a one-car drunk driving accident. Webster is well intentioned, but alcoholic Sheila, with her dangerous history, could prove beyond his efforts to save her, though the two embark on an affair that evolves into marriage and parenthood with the birth of their daughter, Rowan. Sheila's drinking, meanwhile, escalates until she causes another accident, this time with young Rowan in the car, causing Webster to send Sheila away to avoid jail time. Years later, with not a word from long-gone Sheila, Rowan is a typically turmoil-ridden high school senior—moody, her grades slipping, drinking—and her tribulations prompt Webster to reach out to Sheila to help his daughter. Webster and Sheila are more type than character—good-hearted man, damaged woman incapable of love—and the paramedic rescue scenes feel mostly like opportunities for Shreve to show off her research. Still, the story runs like a well-oiled machine and should sate the author's fans.
Publishers Weekly


Shreve's 11th work of fiction, following A Change in Altitude (2009) centers on rookie paramedic Pete Webster, whose life is irrevocably changed when he becomes romantically involved with Sheila, a woman he rescues from a car wreck. Shreve displays her talent for research through her emphasis on Pete's work as an emergency medical technician and once again displays her ability to create engaging characters. Narrator Dennis Holland, meanwhile, does an excellent job of voicing Pete; Sheila; their teenage daughter, Rowan; and several minor characters in a seamless manner that allows for Shreve's superb storytelling to shine through. Shreve's many fans and all appreciators of good fiction will be pleased. —Gloria Maxwell, Metropolitan Community Coll.-Penn Valley Lib., Kansas City, MO
Library Journal


The prolific Shreve brings her customary care to this thoroughly absorbing, perfectly paced domestic drama. Alternating between the life-and-death scenarios Pete encounters on the job and the fraught family tension between father and daughter, Shreve pulls readers right into her story. —Joanne Wilkson
Booklist


In Shreve's latest (A Change in Altitude, 2009, etc.), an EMT medic falls in love with a woman he saves and ends up raising their child alone. At 21, (Peter) Webster has just begun a career as an EMT in Hartstone, Vt., where he still lives with his parents, when he's called to the scene of a one car smashup. Despite himself, Webster is drawn to the victim, Sheila, and breaks protocol to seek her out. Drunk when she crashed, Sheila is a lovely 24-year-old from Chelsea, Mass., running away from her abusive cop lover. She is also a pool hustler who has lived by her wits all her life. Webster's not sure she genuinely loves him the way he loves her, but ultimately he doesn't care. When she becomes pregnant, he puts aside his plans to buy the land he's dreamed of owning and marries her. Despite misgivings, his parents are supportive, and their baby daughter Rowan is a delight. At first life seems to be perfect for the young couple. But Webster begins to see signs that Sheila is drinking again as he confides in both his parents and his partner at work. The marriage turns rocky as Sheila spirals down. The crisis occurs when she drives drunk, with Rowan in town, and causes an accident with injuries to both Rowan and the other driver. To avoid jail, she agrees to leave Rowan with Webster and disappear. Every woman's ideal of the nurturing male, Webster devotes his life to Rowan. Eighteen years later, Rowan is a high-school senior, and the joy of Webster's life. Then her life goes off the rails, in part because she thinks she's inherited Sheila's alcoholism. Webster selflessly tracks down Sheila, who has stopped drinking and become a painter, because he realizes Rowan needs her. A pale novel, heavy on uplift and padded with episodes of Webster responding as an EMT to various crises, but it's hard not to root for such a WASP mensch.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Rowan and Webster seem to have had a good relationship until recently. However, as a single father raising a daughter, Webster has doubts about how well he's done. What kinds of things might Rowan have missed out on, growing up without a mother? To what extent do you think this accounts for her recent behavior?

2. Sheila's daring and devil-may-care attitude is part of what attracts Webster to her, but early on he sees warning signs in her behavior. Is Webster foolish to get romantically involved with her nonetheless, or are attraction and love too strong to be checked by logic? Do you think he believes Sheila will change for him? And if so, is this a reasonable expectation to have of one's lover or spouse?

3. Burrows and Webster get an emergency call from a teenager and her mother, but the situation turns out to be very different from what it seems, with disastrous consequences (49). Do you think they were at fault for the judgment call they made? What would you have done in that situation?

4. When Sheila goes to AA, Webster believes their problems are over: "Now life would be different. He was sure of it" (130). But Sheila soon relapses. Why do you think the program doesn't work for her at this point? Is any part of her effort is sincere, or is she just trying to appease Webster?

5. Webster, Rowan, and Sheila share a picnic breakfast in the woods, but it soon becomes clear that their moods during this outing are very different (134). What does this scene convey about how Sheila and Webster view their relationship, parenthood, and their family? Why might their views be so far apart?

6. Sheila tells Webster, "You were my best shot .... [at] safety. You exude safety" (118). Why is Webster so insulted by this statement? What do you think Sheila means by it?

7. As Rowan starts to act out, Webster uses different strategies: confronting her, ignoring the behavior, even seeking help from an unlikely source. But none of these have the desired effect. How might he have coped differently? Or do you think nothing he could have done would have worked?

8. Why does Sheila react the way she does when Webster first comes to see her? Did you expect her to behave differently? What might she have wanted to say to Webster that she held herself back from saying?

9. Initially, Webster chooses not to tell Rowan the whole story about how Sheila left. Why do you think he withholds "one important fact" (186)? Is he right to do so? Would have changed Rowan's outlook if he had told her the truth from the outset?

10. Sheila and Webster blame themselves and each other for Sheila's departure. Do they share the blame equally or is one of them more responsible than the other? Is Sheila at fault because she acted recklessly? Should Webster have tried harder to find a solution that kept their family intact?

11. Sheila has missed many years of Rowan's life. To what extent do you think true reconciliation between Rowan and Sheila is possible? Is the role of "mother" something irrevocable or, as Webster says, do you "have to earn the title of mother" (222)?

12. The first time Rowan and Sheila meet again, Webster observes that there is "No mention yet of abandonment or guilt. Anger or remorse. That will come..."(274). If you were Rowan, what would you want to say to Sheila? And in Sheila's place, what would you want to tell Rowan?

13. How does the theme of "rescue" play out in the novel? Is it possible to rescue another person, even when they refuse help? Do we have a responsibility to try to rescue our loved ones? If so, is there a limit to that responsibility?

14. Imagine the characters' lives a year after the end of the novel. What do you think the shape of this family will be?
(Questions from the author's website.)

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