Susan Wiggs

copyright 1998, Mira Books. ISBN 1-55166-459-3 376 pp. 5.99

This is a handsome book. I'd like to believe that I don't purchase books by their covers---I let the little blurbs on the back lead me down the primrose path instead, or take on the guide of other reviewers, which is how I discovered this book---but I certainly always feel attractive packaging is a bonus. Although this is the first effort by this author I've read, she's apparently garnered some acclaim as her name is bigger than the title. Though there are some curly serifs, and the text is embossed in metallic fuscia, it's still relatively legible.

The text is set over a pen and ink drawing of an old (small) square rigger, delicately colored. Much of drawing is bleached to pale yellow lines, provided a subtle background for the title and cover blurb. This is a lot of text for one cover, but it's nice to see good illustration and graphic design competently combined. Hurray for restraint.

The book is prefaced with those letters from the author to the reader---including an address---which seem to be getting more common and which, perhaps because of the traditional friendliness between sf authors and readers (the genre in which I did much of earliest adult reading) I find appealing.

The opening wasn't as strong, unfortunately.

A desparate man, on the run, awakens Dr. Leah Mundy with a gun to her head and a demand that she accompany him to cure his sick wife. You know what the author is trying to do here: set up an initial misunderstanding---the guy must be a jerk if he's holding a gun to someone he's not only met before, but whom he wants to help him as well. But, he's also a fugitive. As the doctor herself points out, she would have come helped him with a simple request. If he was going to hold a gun to her head, it should've been a few pages later, after she refused to drop everything in order to accompany him and his sick wife on their sea voyage. The book could've opened with him pulling the gun then, and flashing back. I think it would've been just as effective emotionally and a whole lot more logical.

I like the premise of the characters, especially the doctor, for whom the author has obviously done some research. I dimly recall reading the autobiography of one of these early women physicians, who, when she saw a woman with an elegant hat with three black feathers in it, concluded she would like the same when she grew up, and decided doctoring would support her in the manner to which she planned to become accustomed. Despite considerable prejudice of the period, she serenely pursued her goal.

Leah, however, is considerably more plagued with doubts. Though a hard worker and a good doctor, she has no people skills, and is closed off against the townspeople. But I don't really get enough sense---either from her internal moods or the responses of the townspeople---that she's all that prickly. The evidence of their dislike, or perceived dislike, isn't convincing, at least for me. Confrontations between Mundy and her community not only struck me as not quite believable, but, once I'd accepted them, were too easily resolved by Jake, who with a mere sentence or two manages to completely defuse what is close to a lynch mob. People don't calm down that easily or quickly, in my experience.

In fact, Jackson Underhill, owner of the leaky boat, wavers between harshness and extraordinary compassion. I like the character, and the fact that the author makes a real effort to allow the reader ready access to his feelings. Unfortunately, I don't think the character's inconsistancies have been very carefully knit together---instead, for example, there are several repetitions of same ruminations about how a particular incident has afflicted his current personality (same goes for Leah Mundy, by the way.) Quite apart from the fact that it's more interesting to be shown, via a character's conversations or actions, his personality problems, I also want to see evidence of the many small steps of change that, to me, make more sense than a repetitive, nearly identical presentation of psyche that suddenly changes with little or no warning, which makes for uneven and unsatisfying character development.

Where, for example, amongst the childhood sexual and physical abuse in the orphanage, the hard jobs as seaman, gambler, and gunslinger, did Underhill learn his psychological insight and gentleness? People do manage to pull themselves out of the most appalling conditions, but, again, from the evidence presented, I'm at a loss as to how Jackson achieved it. His wife, Carrie, is equally confounding. She has some very severe problems, but there is very little foreshadowing for much of the book to indicate just how bad they are.

Despite the occasional flatness or inconsistancy of the characters, resulting from this lack of foreshadowing and transition, I thought the setting, like the cover design, rich, attractive, and described with restraint. The historical details, especially about doctoring were also interesting, and I wish they'd been more carefully described---how precisely did Dr. Mundy abort that baby, for example? I'd even settle for knowing precisely what symptoms indicated to the good doctor that it was necessary to save the life of the mother. The Texas ranger who pursues Underhill is a creditable character, whom frankly I found more appealing at times than the man he was chasing. Pity also that Leah's only woman friend and fellow physician got so little space.

A pleasant read, two and a half stars

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Sylvus Tarn

Last modified: Thu Sep 10 22:07:15 EDT 1998