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A powerfully emotional and beautifully written story of heartbreaking loss and undying love He was a fishing guide and struggling artist from a south George trailer park. She was the beautiful only child of South Carolina’s most powerful senator. Yet once Doss Michaels and Abigail Grace Coleman met by accident, they each felt they’d found their true soul mate. Ten years into their marriage, when Abbie faces a life-threatening illness, Doss battles it with her every step of the way. And when she makes a list of ten things she hopes to accomplish before she loses the fight for good, Doss is there, too, supporting her and making everything possible. Together they steal away in the middle of the night to embark upon a 130-mile trip down the St. Mary’s River—a voyage Doss promised Abbie in the early days of their courtship. Where the River Ends chronicles their love-filled, tragedy-tinged journey and a bond that transcends all.
A powerfully emotional and beautifully written story of heartbreaking loss and undying love He was a fishing guide and struggling artist from a south George trailer park. She was the beautiful only child of South Carolina’s most powerful senator. Yet once Doss Michaels and Abigail Grace Coleman met by accident, they each felt they’d found their true soul mate. Ten years into their marriage, when Abbie faces a life-threatening illness, Doss battles it with her every step of the way. And when she makes a list of ten things she hopes to accomplish before she loses the fight for good, Doss is there, too, supporting her and making everything possible. Together they steal away in the middle of the night to embark upon a 130-mile trip down the St. Mary’s River—a voyage Doss promised Abbie in the early days of their courtship. Where the River Ends chronicles their love-filled, tragedy-tinged journey and a bond that transcends all.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
Chapter One1 MAY 30
I climbed the final step into my studio, sniffed the dank fireplace and wondered how long it would take an errant flame to consume everything in here. Minutes I should think. Arms folded, I leaned against the wall and stared at all the eyes staring back at me. Abbie had tried so hard to make me believe. Even taken me halfway around the world. Introduced me to Rembrandt, poked me in the shoulder and said, "You can do that." So I had painted. Faces mostly. My mother had planted the seed that, years later, Abbie watered, nurtured and pruned. In truth, given a good flame and a tardy fire department, I stood to make more money on an insurance payout. Stacked around me in layered rows against the four walls lay more than three hundred dusty works—a decade's worth—all oil on canvas. Faces captured in moments speaking emotions known by hearts but spoken by few mouths. At one time, it had come so easily. So fluidly. I remember moments when I couldn't wait to get in here, when I couldn't hold it back, when I would paint on four canvases at once. Those all-nighters when I discovered Vesuvius in me.
The last decade of my life was staring back at me. Once hung with promise in studios across Charleston, paintings had slowly, one at a time, returned. Self-proclaimed art critics pontificating in local papers complained that my work "lacked originality," "was absent of heart" and my favorite, "was boring and devoid of artistic skill or understanding."
There's a reason the critics are called critics.
On the easel before me stretched a white canvas. Dusty, sun-faded and cracked. It was empty.
Like me.
I stepped through the window, along the side of the roof, and climbed the iron stairs to the crow's nest. I smelled the salt and looked out over the water. Somewhere a seagull squawked at me. The air was thick, dense and blanketed the city in quiet. The sky was clear, but it smelled like rain. The moon hung high and full, casting shadows on the water that lapped the concrete bulkhead a hundred feet away. The lights of Fort Sumpter sat glistening in the distance to the southeast. Before me, the Ashley and Cooper rivers ran into one. Most Charlestonians will tell you it is there that the two form the Atlantic Ocean. Sullivan's Island sat just north, along with the beach where we used to swim. I closed my eyes and listened for the echo of our laughter.
That'd been a while.
The "Holy City," with its competing steeples piercing the night sky, lay still behind me. Below me stretched my shadow. Cast upon the roof, it tugged at my pants leg, begging me backward and pulling me down. The ironwork that held me had been fashioned some fifty years ago by local legend Philip Simmons. Now in his nineties, his work had become the Charleston rave and was very much in demand. The crow's nest, having ridden out the storm, had come with the house. In the thirteen years we'd lived here, this nine square feet of perch had become the midnight platform from which I viewed the world. My singular and solitary escape.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I checked the screen and saw the Texas area code. "Hello?"
"Doss Michaels?"
"Speaking."
"This is Anita Becker, assistant to Dr. Paul Virth."
"Yes?" My breathing was short. So much hung on her next few words.
She paused. "We wanted to call and . . ."—I knew it before she said it—". . . say that the oversight committee has met and decided on the parameters of the study. At this time, we're only accepting primary cases. Not secondary." The wind...
About the Author-
CHARLES MARTIN is the author of six novels. He and his family live in Jacksonville, Florida.
Reviews-
May 26, 2008 In this sentimental story about a terminal cancer patient's demise, Martin (When Crickets Cry ) examines the lengths to which a loving husband will go for his dying wife. Doss Michaels, a portrait painter with a “trailer trash” background, marries Charleston, S.C., debutante Abbie Eliot Coleman, raised primarily by her demanding U.S. senator father after her mother died of ovarian cancer when Abbie was two. A decade after Abbie and Doss's marriage, her father and stepmother will still have little to do with Doss. Abbie develops breast cancer that later metastasizes to her brain, and tensions rise when Abbie's parents want her to spend her last days with them. But Doss and Abbie, armed with Abbie's top 10 wish list and fistfuls of medication, begin a 129-mile river journey from the small town of Moniac, Ga., on the St. Mary River out to the ocean. Martin brings to life the varying flora and fauna of this often fraught journey, while he captures the singular atmosphere of life on a changeable river as it traverses through varying Georgian and Floridian terrain. In the tradition of Nicholas Sparks and Robert James Waller, Martin has fashioned a heartbreaking story.
July 15, 2008 A Southern writer who has been compared to Nicholas Sparks, Martin wrote his sixth novel after hearing of a man divorcing a wife dying of breast cancer. Doss Michaels, a fishing guide and part-time artist in Charleston, SC, is willing to face possible kidnapping and other serious charges generated by his disapproving father-in-law to fulfill his wife Abbie's last wishes for one more adventure togethera 130-mile trip down St. Mary's River. Filled with stereotypes (Abbie is the beautiful daughter of a Charleston senator who considers Doss trailer trash) and stretching credulity at times (a woman dying of cancer surviving even a day in a canoe), this story might win over readers nonetheless with its theme of husbandly devotion. The many nice ideas and images throughout, such as the use of the river journey as a metaphor for life, and Abbie and Doss's loving 14-year marriage chronicled in alternate chapters also compensate. Yet the abundance of nature/wildlife detail may detract from the story for some readers. But Abbie's top-ten wishes for her last year will make readers consider their own. Purchase where Martin is popular.Rebecca Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 1, 2008 Theres sweet and sensitive, then theresdownright saccharine. Martins vapid tale of a young husband whowill go to the ends of the earth to grant his dying wife her final wish is a work ofunabashed romanticism and heartbreakingsadnessthat requiresreaders to suspend disbelief and simply ride the high current of emotion. When starving artist Doss Michaels interrupts the rape-in-progress of supermodel Abbie Coleman in aCharleston park, he sets in motion a fairy-talelove story. Then, a decadeinto their storybook marriage, during a yearspent visiting European art galleries, thanks tofive-figure commissions for Doss, Abbie discovers a lump in her breast, the herald ofvirulent cancer.With seemingly only days left to live, she makes Doss fulfill a promise to repeat their honeymoon trip canoeing down a river inthe wilds of Georgia. The arduous journey is rife withDeliverance-style malevolence as Doss and Abby fight off would-be gang rapists (again!), dodge a hurricane, and employ a bush pilot and defrocked priest to help them. Martins jejune and hackneyed sixth novelis being touted as his mainstream debut, and it may well appeal tofans of Nicholas Sparks, Robert JamesWaller, and Richard Paul Evans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)
─USA TODAY
"Lovers of love stories, get ready to cry you a 'River.'"
─Fayetteville Observer
"This tale is a pleasure to read because it eloquently pictures unquestioning, steadfast love."
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