Cameo Lake - Softcover

Wilson, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1416587721 ISBN 13: 9781416587729

Verlag: Gallery Books, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

The novels of Susan Wilson are rich with stirring conflict and deeply felt emotion. "An empathetic storyteller" (Publishers Weekly), she delves into the complexities of the human heart to seek the truest meaning of love.

Cameo Lake

Putting herself first doesn't come easy to Cleo Grayson McCarthy. A loving wife, doting mother, and dutiful daughter-in-law, she has always done her writing on the side, in hours stolen from her "real" life. Now, desperate for the solitude she needs to finish her latest novel, she convinces her husband that she must spend the summer at her best fiend's rustic cottage at Cameo Lake in New Hampshire, out of reach of cell phones and the demands of family and friends.

Even as she immerses herself in her work, Cleo can't help but be aware of the man who lives across the lake. A reclusive composer, Ben Turner is struggling to come to terms with his wife's accident. An outcast, he is regarded with suspicion by the lake community, even accused by some of harming his wife. But at night, Cleo hears his music drifting across the water, and senses she has found a kindred spirit.

As they meet time and again -- often on the raft anchored in the middle of Cameo Lake -- Cleo and Ben begin a satifying friendship suprising in its intimacy and depth. And when a painful betrayal leaves Cleo stunned and adrift, she finds unexpected comfort and absolution in Ben's arms.

But love is never simple, and before Cleo can determine whether to fight for her marriage or seek a future with Ben, she must first know her own heart, and admit truths ling left unsaid. Even as Cleo struggles to come to terms with her own truths, Ben must find a way to face his. An unforgettable take of the many faces of love, Cameo Lake is Susan WIilson at her very finest.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

From the time I was a little girl, the word "writer" held a special significance to me. I loved the word. I loved the idea of making up stories. When I was about twelve, I bought a used Olivetti manual typewriter from a little hole in the wall office machine place in Middletown, CT called Peter's Typewriters. It weighed about twenty pounds and was probably thirty years old. I pounded out the worst kind of adolescent drivel, imposing my imaginary self on television heroes of the time: Bonanza, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Star Trek.
Those are my earliest memories of my secret life of writing. For reasons I cannot really fathom, I never pursued writing as a vocation. Although I majored in English, I didn't focus on writing and it wasn't really until I was first married that I hauled out my old Olivetti and began to thump away at my first novel. This was, as I recall, an amorphous thinly plotted excercise in putting sentences together and has mercifully disappeared in some move or another. I didn't try anything more adventurous than some short stories and a lot of newsletters for various things I belonged to until we moved to Martha's Vineyard and I bought my first computer. My little "Collegiate 2" IBM computer was about as advanced as the Olivetti was in its heyday but it got me writing again and this time with some inner determination that I was going to succeed at this avocation. I tapped out two novels on this machine with its fussy little printer. Like the first one, these were wonderful absorbing exercises in learning how to write.
What happened then is the stuff of day time soap opera. Writing is a highly personal activity and for all of my life I'd kept it secret from everyone but my husband, who, at the time, called what I did nights after the kids went to bed, my "typing." Until, quite by accident, I discovered that here on the Vineyard nearly everyone has some avocation in the arts. Much to my delight, I discovered a fellow closet-writer in the mom of my kids' best friends. For the very first time in my life I could share the struggle with another person. I know now that writers' groups are a dime a dozen and I highly recommend the experience, but with my friend Carole, a serendipitious introduction to a "real writer", Holly Nadler, resulted in my association with my agent. Holly read a bit of my "novel" and liked what she read, suggested I might use her name and write to her former agent. I did and the rest, as they say, is history.
Not that it was an overnight success. The novel I'd shown Holly never even got sent to Andrea. But a third, shorter, more evolved work was what eventually grew into Beauty with the guidance of Andrea and her associates at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
The moral of the story: keep at it. Keep writing the bad novels to learn how to write the good ones. And, yes, it does help to know someone. Andrea might have liked my work, but the path was oiled by the introduction Holly Nadler provided.
Hawke's Cove is my second published novel, although there is a "second" second novel in a drawer, keeping good company with the other "first" novels.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

The sun dappled the track in front of me, strobing brilliant to black, dazzling my eyes and making me squint. I maneuvered my borrowed four-by-four into the ruts I couldn't go around, the groaning of the behemoth vehicle condemning my inexperience.

Just the good side of mud season, the track was only vestigially wet in the deeper grooves, uncomfortable but not impassable. Heavy tire marks ahead of me guided my way when I would have packed it in otherwise. After the lonely three-and-a-half-hour drive from Providence, it wouldn't have taken much else to turn me back from committing myself to this exile in the New Hampshire woods.

Grace's instructions had been precise. I found the turnoff to the cabin easily: third left beyond the abandoned fruit stand, watch for the faded blue sign cameo lake at the head of the mile-long private way. Before going any further I paused, checked my watch, and picked up the mobile phone plugged into the lighter. Grace had warned me that the cabin lay in a dead zone for microwaves and the car phone would only work at the top of the drive. Once down the road, I was lost to all outside communication. A fact which had made the offer to borrow her cabin that much more appealing.

"McCarthy." Sean's voice was abrupt.

"Hey, I'm here."

"You made good time."

"Under four hours. One stop."

"Good. Good." I knew Sean must have a client with him, his half of the dialogue was shaded with preoccupation.

"I'll call you at home."

"Fine. Wait. I've got a dinner tonight. Call late."

"Never mind, I'll call tomorrow." I repressed my annoyance that he couldn't spend this first night of my being away at home with the kids. Sean had been remarkably agreeable, if not precisely enthusiastic, about my making this working retreat. Putting a good face on it. Every time I mentioned some aspect of the upcoming retreat, Sean would carefully arrange his broad Irish face into a cheerful, benign expression, admirably illustrating the aphorism.

"Hey. Cleo. I'm glad you got there safely."

The track suddenly opened up into a good-sized yard, edged by a semicircle of pine and birch. The late-afternoon sun made golden the yellowish grass and patched the cabin roof between the long shadows. "Plain and simple" was how Grace described this lakefront family camp. Plain and simple it was. Rustic bordering on primitive: a two-circuit electrical system, limited hot water, and no phone. The one concession to environmental responsibility was the recent addition of a flush toilet and a tight tank.

"It's exactly what you need." Grace had taken my unfinished manuscript as her responsibility. "You need to get away from everyone -- every distraction." She meant my inability to say no to anyone: PTA, church, community activities. The phone rang and my Pavlov-ian response was to say yes.

Grace, of course, was my biggest distraction, the one who kept signing me up for things -- "It'll only be once a month...year...day." That's not fair. Grace was my one legitimate distraction, apart from my husband and kids. My best friend.

I sat for a long time staring at my future. Would I really find my abandoning muse in this peaceful, if lonely, place? A cardinal flitted in the bramble bush, cast himself into the air, and landed on the tin chimney. He called to the world, "Mate wanted, apply here," with a sharp call, like someone whistling up their dog. I waited. The cardinal dashed off to another, higher, place. Again he whistled his low-high notes. The breeze riffled through the pine trees and I heard a duck, though the lake wasn't visible from the driveway. Finally I moved, climbing down out of the car. I couldn't feel the writing urge come on me like the Spirit over the Twelve. The magic release from daily commitment hadn't kicked in yet. Instead, surveying my new uncluttered surroundings, I felt only the urge to climb back up into that ridiculous vehicle and barrel home to my known quantities and useful excuses. I didn't feel the writing urge; instead, I felt the bitter loss of my anger, that generalized anger that built up when there were too many things which kept me from working, the anger at myself for using those disruptions as an excuse.

Fish or cut bait. I think I said it aloud. I'm standing in my skeleton -- all protection gone. Gone the protective coloration of car pools and calling lists. No need to drop everything and run. I had arrived.

There isn't much in Cameo. A green denuded of big trees by storms, a pharmacy, and a pizza joint. In the last few years various rural artisans have set up shops and galleries, but nothing would open until July, which was still ten days away.

The next town over has the Big G grocery store, so I made due this first night with a slice of pizza from the pizza place and a quart of milk bought at the gas station convenience store. I had brought the necessities: coffee and cereal, and wine bought at the New Hampshire State Liquor store. The rest of my supplies could wait. My willingness to shrug off the responsibility of meals and good nutrition came as a pleasant surprise.

The private drive seemed shorter the second time in and I negotiated it more effectively. When Grace offered her family's cabin to me for the summer, I carried the offer in my mind for a long time before broaching the idea to Sean. Even with Sean's mother living on the street behind us, I knew Sean would feel put-upon being left with total child-care responsibility. Not that the kids needed much hands-on. At almost ten and eight, Lily and Tim were pretty independent and reliable. This was their golden time -- post total dependence and pre adolescence -- that lovely juncture of age and maturity when they needed only minimal supervision. I could hear his objections before he voiced them: I have to work. I can't blow off clients. What if I have to travel? Subtext: This is your job.

Then there was the other thing. The thing which must never be mentioned because I had forgiven him, but which would forever taint our relationship. The thing even Grace didn't know about because it had happened so long ago -- yet the pain of Sean's infidelity had the power to occasionally stop me in my tracks.

"So, when are you going to talk to Sean about going?" Grace, friend, confidante, pain in the behind, pressed me for an answer.

"I hate setting myself up for an argument."

"Why should he argue against productivity? Isn't that what he's always talking about in his job?"

"Oh, Grace. Okay. I'll talk to Sean."

"Good girl."

Grace stage-managed the situation, as ably as she stage-managed the community theater where we first met. A few years ago, I had toyed with playwriting. Grace, an associate professor of English at Brown, turned one of my scripts into a respectably received production in a weekend of one-act plays by unknowns acted by students. But, as she knew right from the start, it was the long form, the novel, I really wanted to write. The play never saw the light of day again, but Grace and I remained close friends. I achieved a moderate success at novel writing and it was my fourth book that I was finding it hard to pay attention to.

Memorial Day Weekend, a picnic at Grace and her partner Joanie's flat on the East Side of Providence. Grace had Sean backed into a corner, amber bottle of beer in his one hand, the other hand balancing a paper plate heaped with chicken and salad, defenseless against her charm. "Sean, has Cleo told you about my offer?"

Grace always intimidated Sean by her sheer presence. Showman meets insurance man. Large, with masses of long curly hair, and built on the style of Rubens's vision of femininity, Grace fitted her name, every movement fluid, pouring herself over people, filling their space with her voice and gesture. I watched Sean back away...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Gallery Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1416587721
• ISBN 13: 9781416587729
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande