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Summary
Summary
From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Three Wishes" comes a rich and satisfying new novel--a portrait of a marriage: its rise, fall, and resurrection. The time he spends with his ex-wife who's in a coma after an automobile accident brings a man closer to her than ever before, making him realize the consequences of having lost sight of the dreams he once shared with her.
Author Notes
Barbara Delinsky was born on August 9, 1945 in suburban Boston. She received a B.A. in psychology from Tufts University and an M.A. in sociology from Boston College. After graduate school, she worked as a researcher with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. After her first child was born, she worked as a photographer and reporter for the Belmont Herald.
She has written more than 60 novels including Shades of Grace, Coast Road, While My Sister Sleeps and Not My Daughter. Some of her novels have been made into television movies including Three Wishes starring Valerie Bertinelli and A Woman's Place starring Lorraine Bracco. She wrote the nonfiction book Uplift: Secrets from the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors. She has also written under the pen names Bonnie Drake and Billie Douglass.
Barbara's novels, Blueprints and Sweet Salt Air, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2015.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in Big Sur, Calif., Delinsky's latest contemporary romance (after Three Wishes) sings the praises of family and friendship. Rachel Keats, outdoorsy artist, mother of two and ex-wife of architect Jack McGill, is in a coma after a car crash on her way to a book-club meeting. When Jack hears the news in a late-night phone call from Rachel's best friend, flinty Katherine Evans, he puts aside pressing business obligations in San Francisco and rushes to her side. Rachel shows no sign of waking up soon, so Jack moves into her house to take care of their daughters, 15-year-old Samantha and 13-year-old Hope. Meanwhile, Jack keeps slipping into flashback memories of his life with Rachel but can't seem to figure out why she left him six years earlier. Luckily, Katherine is there to give him the answers: Jack is selfish, uncommunicative and materialistic. As Jack gets to know Rachel's life, her friends and the family she has made, he realizes Katherine is right and resolves to show Rachel he's changedÄif only she'll wake up. Sexual stereotypes fuel this predictable saga, and the wait for Rachel's recovery can't sustain tension in the plot. Samantha's wild teenaged antics and the early, prickly stages of a romance between Katherine and Rachel's neurologist lend the only doses of excitement to a story that's stretched far too thin. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Jack McGill wakes in the middle of the night to an emergency phone call: his ex-wife Rachel's car crashed through the guardrail on a coastal road near her home in Big Sur, and she has been taken to surgery. Will Jack come? He hurries to her side more for their daughters' sake than for Rachel, still not understanding why she left him six years ago. But Samantha and Hope need him, and he's still their father. When Jack arrives at the hospital, he's met by Katherine, Rachel's best friend, who updates him on her condition: Rachel is in a coma. All they can do is wait. As Jack prepares to step back into family life, he promises the sleeping Rachel that he will care for their daughters. As the slow days pass, Jack has to deal with withdrawn Hope, belligerent Samantha, and protective Katherine, who keeps asking him: Why is he here? What does he hope to gain? Will he hurt Rachel, again? Jack spends his time sitting next to Rachel reminiscing about their marriage, learning about the new Rachel from her friends, and realizing that he wants to be part of the family again. He wonders, Will Rachel regain consciousness? Does she still love him? Delinsky delivers an emotion-packed journey of truth and redemption, firmly cementing her status as a best-selling writer of top-notch books. Although the end of the story is never in doubt, the sheer impact of the whole makes this a winner, sure to appeal to readers of Nora Roberts, Sandra Brown, and Jayne Ann Krentz. --Melanie Duncan
School Library Journal Review
YA-Jack McGill, a successful San Francisco architect, receives a telephone call in the middle of the night informing him that his ex-wife has been in an auto accident and is comatose in the hospital. Since her prognosis is unpredictable, Jack must put his life and career on hold and take on the role of full-time Dad to their two teenage daughters. While he is in Big Sur, neighbors, friends, and fellow artists fill Jack in on Rachel's life without him, and he begins to understand what went wrong with their marriage. YAs will relate to the daughters as they reveal their own emotions about divorced parents, a life-threatening accident, and a prom date that gets out of hand. A realistic portrayal of difficult emotional situations.-Carol Clark, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Yet another career-obsessed man comes to his senses and discovers his softer side with the woman he loves. Jack McGill is a high-powered architect who's abandoned his creative self for the big bucks (that is, sold out) and is designing casinos and resorts instead of the homes hed always dreamed of. In the transformation from struggling artist to man-of-the-hour, he's lost his wife, the painter Rachel Keats, and their two daughters, 15-year-old Samantha and 13-year-old Hope. Mother and daughters have moved to Big Sur for the quiet lifes rewards. Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, Jack spends any free time he's got with his polished but somehow lackluster girlfriend Jill. In due course, Jack receives a wee-hours phone call and learns that Rachel's been hit in a car accident; she was driving to her book club in Carmel when an elderly woman accidentally edged her off the road. Not quite sure why hes doing it, Jack hauls himself off to Big Sur, leaving behind his angry business partner, several big-money projects, and the long-suffering Jill. Rachel's in a coma; Samantha and Hope--lost in the baffling throes of adolescence--are desperate for love and yet also suspicious and resentful of the father who disappeared so long ago. As Rachel lies unconscious in the hospital, Jack, Samantha, and Hope--with the support of Rachel's new friends, the members of her book group--struggle to become the family they always should have been. Hard-core Delinsky fans (A Womans Place, 1997, etc.) will be satisfied here. But newcomers won't beg for more: Samantha and Hope provide much-needed angst and humor, but Jack and Rachel's relationship, pre- and post-coma, is so predictable that its hard to care.
Library Journal Review
Jack McGill's feelings for his artist ex-wife, Rachel, are put to the acid test when he receives news that she is lying comatose in a hospital after an automobile accident. Jack, a rising San Francisco architect and workaholic, still does not understand why Rachel left him and took their two daughters to live in Big Sur country, but he assumes the parental role for the teenage girls and moves into Rachel's house. Jack's second chance at being a real father is fraught with confrontations. He has deadlines and major clients to impress, and his daughters are leery of trusting him to care for them. Ultimately, Jack is challenged to make some life-altering career choices and to decide whether he should try to win Rachel back. Delinsky's (Three Wishes, LJ 9/1/97) latest love story is filled with heartache, self-discovery, and renewal. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/98.]Mary Ellen Elsbernd, Northern Kentucky Univ., Highland Heights (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
prologue WHEN THE PHONE rang, Rachel Keats was painting sea otters. She was working in oils and had finally gotten the right mix of black for the eyes. There was no way she was stopping to pick up the phone. She had warned Samantha about that. "Hi! You've reached Rachel, Samantha, and Hope. We're otherwise occupied. Please leave your name and number, and we'll call you back. Thanks.'' Through a series of beeps, she applied a smudge of oil with a round brush. Then came a deep male voice that was too old to be calling for Samantha. Rachel would have pictured a gorgeous guy to go with the voice, but he'd said his name too fast. This man wasn't gorgeous. He was a ticket agent, a friend of a friend, more sleaze than style, but apparently good at his job. "I have in my hand three tickets for tonight's Garth Brooks concert,'' he said. "San Jose. Goooood seats. I need to hear from you in five minutes or I'm moving down my list -- '' Rachel made a lunging grab for the phone. "I want them!'' "Heeeey, Rachel. How's my favorite artist?'' "Painting. You need a credit card number, right? Hold on a second.'' She put the phone down, ran through the house to the kitchen, and snatched up her wallet. She was breathless reading off the number, breathless returning to the studio. She swallowed hard, looked at the canvas on the easel and six others nearby waiting to be finished, thought of everything else she had to do in the next three weeks, and decided that she was crazy. She didn't have time to go to a concert. But the girls would be absolutely, positively blown away! She threw the window open and leaned out into clear, woodsy air. "Samantha! Hope!'' They were out there somewhere. She yelled again. Answering yells came from a distance, then closer. "Hurry!'' she yelled back. Minutes later, they came running through the woods, Samantha looking every bit as young as Hope for once, both with blond hair flying and cheeks pink. Rachel shouted the news to them even before they reached her window. The look on their faces was more than worth the prospect of an all-nighter or two. "Are you serious?'' Hope asked. Her eyes were wide, her freckles vibrant, her smile filled with teeth that were still too large for her face. She was thirteen and entirely prepubescent. Rachel grinned and nodded. "Awesome!'' breathed Samantha. At fifteen she was a head taller than Hope and gently curved. Blond hair and all, she was Rachel at that age. "Tonight?'' Hope asked. "Tonight.'' " Good seats?'' Samantha asked. " Great seats.'' Hope pressed her hands together in excitement. "Are we doing the whole thing -- you know, what we talked about?'' Rachel didn't have the time for it. She didn't have the money. But if her paintings were a hit, the money would come, and as for time, life was too short. "The whole thing,'' she said, because it would be good for Samantha to get away from the phone and Hope to get away from her cat and, yes, maybe even good for Rachel to get away from her oils. "Omigod, I have to call Lydia!'' Samantha cried. "What you have to do,'' Rachel corrected her, "is anything that needs to be done for school. We leave in an hour.'' She was definitely crazy . Forget her work. The girls had tons of their own, but...but this was Garth . She returned to her studio for the hour and accomplished as little as she feared her daughters had. Then they piled into her sport utility vehicle and headed north. Having done her research during the someday-we-will stage, she knew just where to go. The store she wanted was on the way to San Jose. It was still open when they got there, and had a perfect selection. Thirty minutes and an obscene amount of money later, they emerged wearing cowboy boots under their jeans, cowboy hats over their hair, and smiles the size of Texas. Thirty minutes after that, with the smell of McDonald's burgers and fries filling the car, they were flying high toward San Jose. Nothing they saw when they got there brought them down. There were crowds and crowds of fans, light shows and smoke, sets that rose from nowhere to produce the man himself, who sang hit after hit without a break, longer-than-ever versions of each, and how could Rachel not be into it, with Hope and Samantha dancing beside her? If she was conservative through the first song or two, any self-consciousness was gone by the third. She was on her feet dancing, clapping high, singing. She cheered with Samantha and Hope when familiar chords announced a favorite song, and shouted appreciatively with them at song's end. The three of them sang their hearts out until the very last encore was done, and then left the arena arm in arm, three friends who just happened to be related. It was a special evening. Rachel didn't regret a minute of it, not even when Samantha said, "Did you see that girl right in front of us? The tall one with the French braid? Did you see the tattoo on her arm? The rose? If I wanted something like that, what would you say?'' "No,'' Rachel said as she drove south through the dark. "Even a tiny one? A little star on my ankle?'' "No.'' "But it's way cool.'' "No.'' "Why not? '' "Because she was older than you. When you're twentyfive -- '' "She wasn't that old.'' "Okay, when you're twenty-two, you can think abouta tattoo. Not now.'' "It has nothing to do with age. It has to do with style.'' "Uh-huh,'' said Rachel, confident on this one, "a style that makes a statement that you may not want to make at twenty-two, if you set your heart on a particular person or thing that doesn't appreciate that kind of statement.'' "Since when are you worried about conformity?'' "Since my fifteen-year-old daughter is heading straight for the real world.'' "Tattoos are hot. All the kids have them.'' "Not Lydia. Not Shelly. Not the ones I see getting off the school bus.'' Samantha crossed her arms and sank lower in her seat, glowering for sure under the brim of her hat. Hope was curled up in the back, sound asleep. Her hat had fallen to the side. Rachel put in a CD and drove through the dark humming along with the songs they had heard that night. She loved her hat, loved her boots, loved her girls. If she had to fall behind in her work, it was for a good cause. She wasn't as convinced of it the next morning, when the girls woke up late and cranky. They picked at breakfast on the run and even then nearly missed the bus. Rachel was wildly relieved when they made it, and wildly apprehensive when, moments later, she stood in her studio and mentally outlined the next three weeks. She worked feverishly through the day, breaking only to meet the girls at the bus stop and have a snack with them, her lunch. Samantha was still on her tattoo kick, so they reran the argument, verbatim at times, before the girl went off to her room in a huff. Hope hung around longer, holding her cat. Finally she, too, disappeared. Rachel spent another hour in the studio. Half concvinced that the otters were done, she stopped and put dinner in the oven. When she returned to the studio, it was to fill another sort of need. But the otters caught her eye again. She gave herself another hour. Now that the hour was gone, things were flowing. It was always the way. One minute more , she told herself for the umpteenth time. With alternating glances at field sketch and photograph, she used the fine edge of her palette knife to add texture to the oil on her canvas. The sea otters were playing in kelp. Her challenge was capturing the wetness of their fur. She had started with raw umber and cobalt blue, and had found it too dark. Using raw umber with ultramarine blue was perfect. "The buzzer rang, Mom,'' Hope called from the door. "Thanks, honey,'' Rachel murmured, adding several last strokes. "Will you take the casserole out and turn off the gas?'' "I already did.'' Hope was at her side now, studying the canvas. "I thought you were done.'' "Something wasn't right.'' She stood back for a longer view and was satisfied. "Better.'' Still eyeing the canvas, she set her palette aside, reached for a solvent cloth, and wiped her hands. "I'll clean up and be right there.'' She looked at Hope. "Did Samantha set the table?'' "I did.'' "She's on the phone again?'' "Still,'' Hope said so dryly that Rachel had to chuckle. She hooked her baby's neck with an elbow and gave asqueeze. "Five minutes,'' she said and sent her off. As promised, five minutes later Rachel was in the kitchen doling out lasagna and salad. Twenty minutes after that, digesting her meal along with a blow-by-blow of the late-breaking news that Samantha had received from her friends, Rachel gave out cleanup assignments. Fifteen minutes after that, having showered herself free of paint smells and put on fresh clothes, she ran a brush through her hair. Then she paused and looked wildly around for the book she had read the weekend before. She searched the chaos of her bedroom without success. Thinking she might have already set it out, she returned to the kitchen and looked around. "Is my bookin here?'' The girls were doing the dishes, Samantha washing, Hope drying. "I'd look,'' Samantha said with little grace, "but you told me not to do anything until these were done.'' Rachel shifted a pile of mail, mostly clothing catalogues addressed to the self-same woman-child. "I was referring to the telephone,'' she said, checking in and around cookbooks. She doubled over to search the seats of the chairs pushed in at the table. "I remember having it in my hand,'' she murmured to herself when that search, too, proved fruitless. "You're not organized,'' Samantha charged. Rachel regularly preached the merits of organization. "Oh, I am,'' she mused, but distractedly. She went into the living room and began searching there. "I just have a lot on my plate right now.'' That was putting it mildly. With her show three weeks away and closing in fast, she was feeling the crunch. Okay. She had finally hit gold with the sea otters. But there was still the background to do for that one and six others, and eighteen in all to frame -- which would have been fine if she had nothing but work to do in the next three weeks. But there was a dress to buy with Samantha for her first prom, an end-of-the-year picnic to run for Hope's seventh-grade class, dentist's and doctor's appointments for both girls, a birthday party to throw for Ben Wolfe, who owned the art gallery and was a sometime date, and a share-your-career day to spend with three fifth-graders she didn't know. She had splurged last night. She shouldn't be going anywhere tonight. But last night had been for the girls and their mother. Book club was just for her. She loved the women, loved the books. Even if it added pressure to an already hectic work schedule, she wasn't missing a meeting. Hope materialized at her shoulder. "I think it's in yourstudio.'' Closing her eyes, Rachel conjured up the studio, which lay at a far end of her rambling house. She had left it for the day, then returned for an unexpected little while. And before returning? Yes, she'd had the book in her hand. She had carried it there and set it down. "Thanks, sweetheart.'' She cupped Hope's chin. "Are you okay?'' The child looked forlorn. "Guinevere will be fine,'' Rachel said softly. "She ate, didn't she?'' Hope nodded. "See there? That's a good sign.'' She kissed Hope's forehead. "I'd better get the book. I'm running late.'' "Want me to get it?'' Hope asked. But Rachel remembered what she had been drawing before the otters had recaptured her eye. She wanted to make sure that that drawing was put safely away. "Thanks, sweetheart, but I'll do it.'' When Hope looked reluctant to let her go, she begged, "Help Sam. Please,'' and set off. The book was where she had left it, on a corner of the large worktable. Hope had arrived while she was at the easel. The drawing -- a charcoal sketch -- still lay on the desk by the window. Rachel lifted it now and carefully slipped it into a slim portfolio. As she did, her mind's eye re-created the image her sliver of charcoal had made, that of a man sprawled in a tangle of sheets. Even handling the heavy paper, she felt his trim hips, the slope of his spine, and widening above it, dorsal muscle, triceps, deltoid. Had it not been for the hair, it might have been an innocent exercise in drawing the human form. The hair, though, was dark and just a little too long on the neck. The identity was unmistakable; this figure had a name. Better the girls shouldn't see. Taking care to tuck that last portfolio behind the desk, she retrieved the book and hurried back through the house. She gave the girls quick kisses, promised to be home by eleven, and went out to her car. Copyright (c) 1998 by Barbara Delinsky Excerpted from Coast Road by Barbara Delinsky All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.