WHAT BURNS AWAY
By Melissa Falcon Field
Sourcebooks, 2015
336 pages, $14.99
An obscure but perceptive pundit once said: “Husbands and wives should tell each other everything, except the truth and what they’re really thinking.” And sadly, such deception is the basis for the unhappy marriage of Claire to her inattentive husband, Miles.
“What Burns Away” is the debut novel of University of Maine at Farmington alum Melissa Falcon Field, a touching and poignant story of a marriage gradually going off the rails, heading for a painful and emotional train wreck.
Field is a savvy writer, an astute narrator of the fears, feelings and lies we tell ourselves to mask the resentment and heartbreak of bad decisions, uncertainty and guilt in a marriage, pretending that everything is just fine.
Forty-year-old Claire and Miles have been married for seven years, with a 16-month-old son. Miles is a high-powered cardiologist, she is a brilliant climatology researcher. They recently moved from Connecticut to Wisconsin, a promotion for him — a loss of job, friends and stability for her.
Miles is a workaholic, paying little attention to Claire’s needs, and he doesn’t realize how unhappy she is. Then, a chance email encounter through Facebook reconnects Claire with her high school sweetheart, Dean, and romantic fantasies of what might have been burn brightly in her mind.
Claire is thrilled with the rich memories of that steamy teenage romance, until Dean shows up in person and her world quickly becomes a risky game of lust and lies. Dean professes his undying love for Claire, but there is a much more sinister reason for his sudden intrusion into her life.
Their relationship takes a dangerous turn when flashbacks in Claire’s life surface, revealing disturbing behavior, and Dean asks her to do a favor that jeopardizes her life, marriage and any chance at redemption.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE ROYAL TAR: THE 1836 CIRCUS STEAMSHIP FIRE
By Mark Warner
Down East Books, 2015
117 pages, $12.95
Maine’s maritime heritage is filled with stories of shipwrecks, and perhaps one of the most unusual is the wreck of the Royal Tar, in 1836. What makes the Royal Tar’s story so fascinating is that is was a circus ship carrying exotic animals and circus performers, as well as passengers, crew and cargo.
The author, Mark Warner, lives in Newcastle, but was raised on the island of Vinalhaven near where the Royal Tar was lost 179 years ago. This is his fifth nonfiction book. Warner has done a masterful job with his research and his lucid, engaging storytelling, presenting an exciting tale of high-seas adventure and deadly disaster.
As he relates, the Royal Tar was a two-masted, schooner-rigged, wooden-hulled side-wheel steamship operating on a regular schedule between St. John, New Brunswick and Portland. On October 25, 1836 the vessel was carrying a circus troupe — the Macomber, Welch and Company Menagerie — back to Portland after a successful summertime circus tour of the Canadian Maritimes.
Aboard the ship were 92 passengers and crew, along with dozens of exotic circus animals like lions, a tiger, a hyena, camels, horses and an elephant named Mogul. On that fateful night, at sea in gale force winds, the Royal Tar’s boilers overheated and the ship caught fire. The ship was quickly consumed by the flames and sank in Penobscot Bay. Thirty-two people and all the animals perished in the flames or by drowning. The survivors were rescued by the alert crew of a Revenue Service cutter patrolling the coast.
Warner vividly describes the ship’s construction, the operation of its cast-iron “walking beam” steam engine, why the ship was carrying only two of its four lifeboats, the panic and desperation of the passengers and crew and how the Royal Tar got its peculiar name.
Bill Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.
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