First Pages in Fiction: The Sea Keeper's Daughters

In this continuing series, "Novel Beginnings," I dissect first paragraphs of novels and show how the opening of a book sets the foundation for what's to follow in terms of tone, character and story intent. In this installment, we'll explore  The Sea Keeper's Daughters by Lisa Wingate. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Perhaps denial is the mind's way of protecting the heart from a sucker punch it can't handle. Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe denial is the face of overwhelming evidence is a mere byproduct of stubbornness.

Whatever the reason, all I could think standing in the doorway, one hand on the latch and the other trembling on the keys, was, This can't be happening. This can't be how it ends. It's so…quiet. A dream should make noise when it's dying. It deserves to go out in a tragic blaze of glory. There should be a dramatic death scene, a gasping for breath…something.

Denise laid a hand on my shoulder, whispered, "Are you all right?" Her voice faded at the end, cracking into jagged pieces.

"No." A hard, bitter tone sharpened the cutting edge on the word. It wasn't aimed at Denise. She knew that. "Nothing about this is all right. Not one single thing."

"Yeah." Resting against the doorframe, she let her neck go slack until her cheek touched the wood. "I'm not sure if it's better or worse to stand here looking at it, though. For the last time, I mean."

"We put our hearts into this place…" Denial reared its unreasonable head again. I would've called it hope, but if it was hope, it was false and paper-thin kind. The kind that only teases you...

Wingate launches her story with a profound statement about denial. And the paragraphs that follow bring an immediate sense of intimacy. Notice, however, the use of the words "death," "bitter," "hard," and "sharpening." This speaker is not happy and is grappling, but the philosophical nature of the opening sentences reveal the speaker to be wistful and sensitive. The speaker (not sure if it's a man or a woman) is taking a last look at a place that was obviously dear to her/him. Readers don't know what--or where--that place is, but intrigue deepens, especially when Denise offers a gentle touch and then breaks the speaker's reverie to ask, "Are you all right?" Denise's actions and words--and the conversation that ensues--gives the reader a sense that she is a friend and confidante, and she has a stake, along with the speaker, in something that is coming to a close or someplace these two people will have to leave. The speaker's "hard, bitter" response indicates that she is not a willful participant in whatever change is taking place. And thus, this story begins at the end of something.  

If you're familiar with books by Lisa Wingate (this novel is actually the third in her series of Carolina-based stories; read my review of The Prayer Box), you already know she writes multi-generational, dual time-frame novels of domestic fiction, where she often merges two story threads—a present-day story with a story from the past. You'd have to keep reading this novel to see how this opening scene serves to launch the journey of Whitney Monroe, a high-end (yet struggling) restaurant owner in Michigan who comes from a complicated family. When Whitney's elderly, estranged stepfather takes ill, she travels to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to be with him. He lives at the Excelsior, a famed hotel from the Gilded Age, which he also owns. (Whitney will one day inherit the hotel.) While Whitney is in residence, memories from her childhood are evoked, and she also discovers family heirlooms and letters exchanged between her grandmother and a relative Whitney never knew existed. In reading the letters and experiencing incidents involved, Whitney questions her family and heritage, and she is forced to confront issues of race, politics, identity and secrets.

Wingate once again writes an intriguing, multi-layered story where her main character must take a physical journey in order to trek deeper into the recesses of her soul.

The Sea Keeper's Daughters by Lisa Wingate

Tyndale House Publishers, $19.99 Hardcover, 9781414388274, 448 pp
Publication Date: September 8, 2015
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

First Pages in Fiction: Scents and Sensibility

The first paragraphs of a novel can set the foundation for what's to follow in terms of tone, character and story intent.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the novel, Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn:

Home at last! We'd been away so long, first in swampy country, then in a big city--maybe called Foggy Bottom--that confused me from the get-go. Is there time to mention the air in both those places before we really get started? Soggy and heavy: that sums it up.

Where were we? Was it possibly . . . home? Yes! Home! Home at last! Our home--mine and Bernie's--is on Mesquite Road. Mesquite Road's in the Valley. Quite recently I might have heard that the Valley's in Arizona, but don't count on that. What matters is that right now I was inhaling a nice big noseful of Valley air. Light and dry, with a hint of greasewood and just plain grease: perfect. I felt tip-top. Bernie opened our door, kicked aside a huge pile of mail, and we went in.

"Ah," said Bernie, dropping our duffel bag on the floor. I did the first thing that came to mind--just about always my MO--which in this case meant sniffing my way from room to room to room, zigzagging back and forth, nose to floor. Front hall, our bedroom, Charlie's bedroom--mattress bare on account of Charlie not being around much since the divorce--office, with the circus-elephant-pattern rug, where I actually picked up the faint whiff of elephant, even though no elephant had ever been in the office. I'd had some experience with elephants, specifically an elephant name of Peanut, no time to go into that now...

Do you get the idea the narrator isn't a person? Can you tell the voice leading you into the story is that of a dog? How? The speaker seems conflicted, yet what person do you know who sniffs his way from room to room? And the setting? It's telling that the speaker doesn't really know where "the Valley" is located, but as he inhales a "big, noseful of Valley air," he finds it light and dry, so we can gather this scene is set in the desert. And what's with the elephant rug? Well, that's what makes the reader keep reading...

If you're not familiar with the Chet and Bernie mystery-thriller series, you're missing out. Each book, there are eight in all, is narrated by Chet, a hyperactive dog, who works with his laid-back master and partner, Bernie Little of the Little Detective Agency.

In Scents and Sensibility, the duo have returned home from visiting Bernie's girlfriend in Washington D.C. and realize they've been robbed. The safe in Bernie's office has been pried out of a wall and stolen—complete with a prized watch that belonged to Bernie's grandfather. Then they realize their neighbor has an adult son (one they never knew he had, who is now residing next door) and also has a mature Saguaro Cactus suddenly growing on his front lawn. Where did it come from? How did it get there? It's against the law to move a cactus of this variety. Knowing the neighbor had a key to Chet and Bernie's house in case of emergency, is it possible the neighbor's son is the thief and the cactus transporter? What begins as a simple welcome home set-up evolves into another case—another dangerous, crime-solving adventure—for Chet and Bernie involving cactus thieves, murder and a kidnapping.

This clever, funny and riveting series is perfect for fans of crime/mystery fiction and animal/pet lovers.

Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn

Atria Books, $25.00 Hardcover, 9781476703428, 320 pp
Publication Date: July 14, 2015
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

First Pages in Fiction: Instructions for a Heatwave

The first paragraph of a short story and/or the first page of a novel can be a microcosm that sets the foundation for what's to follow in terms of tone, character and story intent.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the novel, Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell:

Highbury, London 

The heat, the heat. It wakes Gretta just after dawn, propelling her from the bed and down the stairs. It inhabits the house like a guest who has outstayed his welcome: it lies along corridors, it circles around curtains, it lolls heavily on sofas and chairs. The air in the kitchen is like a solid entity filling the space, pushing Gretta down into the floor, against the side of the table.

Only she would choose to bake bread in such weather.

Consider her now, yanking open the oven and grimacing in its scorching blasts as she pulls out the bread tin. She is in her nightdress, hair still wound into curlers. She takes two steps backwards and tips the steaming loaf into the sink, the weight of it reminding her, as it always does, of a baby, a newborn, the packed, damp warmth of it.

She has made soda bread three times a week for her entire married life. She is not about to let a little thing like a heatwave get in the way of that. Of course, living in London, it is impossible to get buttermilk; she has to make do with a mixture of half milk and half yogurt. A woman at Mass told her it worked and it does, up to a point, but it is never quite the same.


This is a story about a family thrown into crisis when the patriarch, Robert Riordan, a retired bank employee--husband of Gretta and father to three adult children--disappears on a hot summer morning in 1976. Gretta reaches out to her children in an effort to find Robert, but as the story unravels, it soon becomes clear that her children are more lost than her husband (on a psychological and emotional level), as each child is facing challenges in his/her personal life and in relationship to each other. The nature of secrets, estrangement and shame rise to the forefront of the narrative. 

O'Farrell sets up those first four paragraphs to reflect an ominous restlessness amid actions of normal, daily life. This would appear a day like many others ("She has made soda bread three times a week for her entire married life"), but something about this particular day is and will be different. For starters, Gretta is baking, operating the oven, amid a heatwave and the reference to the need to substitute buttermilk in the recipe ("A woman at Mass told her it worked and it does, up to a point, but it is never quite the same") might be a metaphor indicative that perhaps, amid the crucible of events that unfold over the course of the novel, the ingredients that make up this Irish-Catholic family might never be the same, either.  

The kitchen often symbolizes the center of family life and if you look at the language O'Farrell employs, the tactile sense of the bread reminds Gretta of a baby ("...a newborn, the packed damp warmth of it"), which seems reflective of the implications of Gretta's children in this story.

In a few short sentences, O'Farrell evokes a sense of the oppressive, stifling heat that mirrors the brooding, pressured confinement of the story and how, as stated later in the book, "Strange weather brings out strange behavior." It's also interesting to note that O'Farrell relies on an Irish comfort food to anchor and ultimately juxtapose the coziness of family life against the idea that the "heat" in these lives is about to get turned up.

See how much you can learn about a book from the first page?


Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95 Hardcover, 9780385349406 304 pages
Publication Date: June 18, 2013
To order this book via INDIEBOUND, link HERE