Whose Waves These Are

Whose Waves These Are

by Amanda Dykes
Whose Waves These Are

Whose Waves These Are

by Amanda Dykes

Paperback

$17.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Tuesday, April 2
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

Winner of the 2020 Christy Award Book of the Year

In the wake of WWII, a grieving fisherman submits a poem to a local newspaper: a rallying cry for hope, purpose . . . and rocks. Send me a rock for the person you lost, and I will build something life-giving. When the poem spreads farther than he ever intended, Robert Bliss's humble words change the tide of a nation. Boxes of rocks inundate the tiny, coastal Maine town, and he sets his calloused hands to work, but the building halts when tragedy strikes.

Decades later, Annie Bliss is summoned back to Ansel-by-the-Sea when she learns her Great-Uncle Robert, the man who became her refuge during the hardest summer of her youth, is now the one in need of help. What she didn't anticipate was finding a wall of heavy boxes hiding in his home. Long-ago memories of stone ruins on a nearby island trigger her curiosity, igniting a fire in her anthropologist soul to uncover answers.

She joins forces with the handsome and mysterious harbor postman, and all her hopes of mending the decades-old chasm in her family seem to point back to the ruins. But with Robert failing fast, her search for answers battles against time, a foe as relentless as the ever-crashing waves upon the sea.  

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780764232664
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Publication date: 04/30/2019
Pages: 364
Sales rank: 392,899
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Amanda Dykes, a former English teacher, is a drinker of tea, dweller of redemption, and spinner of hope-filled tales. Her novella, Bespoke: A Tiny Christmas Tale, was met with critical acclaim from Publishers Weekly, Readers' Favorite, and more. Whose Waves These Are is her debut novel. Find her online at www.amandadykes.com.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Ansel-by-the-Sea, Maine September 1944

One minute a guy is splitting wood in the northeastern corner of the country, stomach rumbling and heart afire with ambition in the wake of his eighteenth birthday, and the next minute he's pumping water from the old kitchen sink to clean the work o_ his hands and pick up a letter from the president of the United States of America himself. It lies there on the red, paint- chipped kitchen table, like an old friend who has let himself in and put his feet up, the most natural thing in the world.

But it's anything but natural.

Somewhere in transit on the postman's boat ride across the bay, the letter has taken on some drops of water. The mail usually does in Ansel-by-the-Sea, and the postman doubles as a sleuth, delivering letters with partial addresses with infallible accuracy. This time the name is blurred, only Bliss and the house name legible. Usually just a name suffices, or if one was being very formal, the house's name. Sailor's Rest.

Robert Bliss rips it open, grips it too hard.

ORDER TO REPORT FOR INDUCTION

His pulse pounds in his ears. This is it. Almost exactly four years now, he's waited for this day. Ever since he'd gathered along with the rest of the town to watch President Roosevelt announce the first number of the draft. They'd watched on the town's only television, over at the Bait, Tackle, and Books shop, craning to see the capsules filling a towering glass bowl on the screen. Tiny white papers, each inscribed with a number and rolled up tight. A man had lifted a wooden spoon — hewn from the very marrow of the room where the Declaration of Independence was signed long ago — and stirred. Slow and sacred, moving the numbers until they were as mixed up as the war-torn world outside their country. Even through the television's grainy image, Robert could feel the thick gravity of the moment in that room of Washington men, electric with awareness that these numbers ... they were people. Families. Lives about to be turned upside down by this thing called the draft.

Four years later the electricity pulses through Robert still, assurance that this is what he was made for. For such a time as this.

He holds the letter a moment longer, feeling a thousand nights of prayers gathered up in it. Answered here. That finally, at eighteen, he could go. Finally — though they'd closed enlistment "to protect the home- front workforce" and he couldn't just sign up — the draft is calling him to rise and fight. Protect. The only thing he has ever been good at.

He runs a thumb over the crookedly stamped return address in the upper-left corner — the local draft board.

The President of the United States,

Not yet ready to read the salutation, Robert skims down to the bold word GREETING in all capitals.

Having submitted yourself to a local board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and service in the land or naval forces of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and service therein.

Selected. Training. Service. Robert's breath comes quick at those words.

You will, therefore, report to the local board named above at

The next words are hand- typed in.

Machias Railroad Station at 7:15 A.M., on the 17th day of October, 1944.

He scans the rest and then closes his eyes. Swallows. There's one line yet to read, and a part of him doesn't want to read it. It'll be his name. It has to be. Still, a knot twists in his stomach at the knowledge that there is one other soul in this family whose name might appear there instead.

The clock ticks into the silence as Germany rains fire over Britain across the ocean. And he returns to the top of the letter.

To —

The screen door slams, jolting Robert. Instinct closes the letter, tucks it behind his back. It's his brother, Roy, giving him a mouth-shut grin as he chews, a half- gone apple in his hand. He is Robert's twin in every way but two: Roy came two minutes earlier into the world, and Roy now wears a simple band on his left ring finger.

One that, try as Robert might to stop it, still sears something awful into him every time he sees it.

"Come on," Roy says. "We're going for a clam dig."

Robert folds the letter slowly, hoping not to draw attention to it. "We?"

"You. Me. Jenny. And ..." Roy takes a breath, his shoulders wide. There's something of the little kid in him, some untold excitement. "Someone else, too. You'll see when we get there. Let's go."

Robert nods, slides the letter into his back pocket. He's been avoiding these outings with the newlyweds, but the letter drives him, wanting to get Roy as far from it as he can. But Roy's grin freezes. He's spotted the empty envelope on the table.

Two lanky strides and he's spun the envelope still on the table to read its nameless text. Sees, no doubt, that it's from the War Department.

Heaviness rolls through the room like a tide. They both know there are only two people it could be for, and they're standing face-to-face.

Robert's jaw locks.

Roy gestures to Robert's pocket. "Is that the letter?"

It's like lifting lead, but Robert pulls it out.

Roy snatches it, unfolds it, reads it from the beginning — and his face goes white.

Robert's heart lands in his stomach. He can't see the letter, but he can read his brother's face. And it's not the answer Robert hoped for.

The screen door creaks open but doesn't slam this time. That would be Jenny, the gentle closing of the door so like her. A month and a half a wife and, as their mom liked to say, she had the glow of a bride.

"Poor as church mice and rich as kings," Jenny had said when Roy showed her the wedding bands. He'd carved them from the wood of an old-growth tree Dad and Mom had found on the mountain many years ago.

Robert's gaze settles on Jenny as she approaches behind her husband, wood-and-wire clam hod in hand. Cheeks touched with the chilly wind, she looks brighter than ever — with a quiet beauty that can take a man's breath right out of him. Robert looks at the floor.

"Did you tell him?" She slips her hand into Roy's. Robert forces himself to look. This is how he needs to see her. Together with Roy. He must look, so his heart will see, so his soul will follow. She's Roy's now, Roy's forever.

"I ..." Roy looks at her as if there's a whole ocean between them. She squeezes his hand and chatters on, her melodic voice at an excited tempo, weaving through the silent currents the letter has brought.

"Well," she says, "your mother was thrilled. You should have seen her, Roy." She laughs, and it's music. "She jumped right in the Ford and took off for Machias to see Mrs. Laughlin about some yarn. She says she has to get started knitting a blanket ..." She talks on, her hand falling to her stomach. The leaden weight inside Robert grows. He looks from Jenny, to Roy, to the letter. And back at Roy. A baby. And Roy standing there with a letter that may as well be from the grim reaper.

His brother locks his stare with Robert's. Everything fades away, and they're ten years old again, looking out over the ocean as a storm bigger than their whole universe approaches and Dad motors off to town to fetch Mom home before it hits. "Stick together, boys," he hollers, and disappears around their island. "Keep inside away from the storm, and don't let each other out of your sight." Robert had failed then. He could not fail now.

Jenny has stopped talking, the flush on her face fading as her smile does, too. "What is it?" she asks, watching this unspoken knowing go on between the brothers.

Roy shakes his head. "Nothing. I'll tell you later." He grasps for — and finds — a smile, pulls Jenny close until her head is leaning on his shoulder.

And just as they've done a thousand times since their youth, the three of them walk down to the clam flats by Milton Farm and dig up a bounty. Jenny swinging the basket, Roy hauling a clam rake and grinning at her as if she's gold itself, and Robert's chest yawning into a cavern over this injustice.

"What's got you all tongue-tied?" Jenny's sprinkling of freckles over her petite nose drives the stake deeper in him. But for her ... even now, he tries to muster some semblance of a smile. It feels so mangled and forced on his face, he probably looks like a bloated puffer fish. She laughs, all silvery, and some of the edge falls away inside him.

He knows, despite everything — looking at her and looking at his brother, who wouldn't hurt a fly — he would do anything for them.

"You two meeting up tonight?" Jenny looks between them, entwining her fingers with Roy's. "For your birthday tradition. I didn't hear you mention it, so I wasn't sure ..."

Roy looks at Jenny, drinking her in, knowing what she doesn't know yet. That any time spent away from her now is time that cannot be reclaimed in this ticking clock of a draft. Any time spent on the island of their boyhood, resurrecting their juvenile midnight-birthday traditions, is priceless time away from his bride.

"I was thinking we'd maybe skip it this year," Roy says. He looks at Robert, and the message is clear: Please understand.

He understands more in this moment than he ever has and prays Roy won't hate him for this. For there is only one thing that can make this right.

"No," Robert says. He flinches at how abrupt it sounds, sticking his foot in his mouth like always, fumbling with words. "I mean — let's meet up." He pastes that puffer-fish grin back on his face. "Please? For old times' sake. Just one last time."

Those words hit Roy harder than Robert intended. Too much silence passes, and Jenny looks quizzically between them. "Go ahead," she says, laying an arm gently over her slim stomach once more. "Who knows how many more times you'll be able to do this?"

The question, meant in kindness, socks Robert hard. If all goes well tonight, Roy's days with Jenny will never end.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Whose Waves These Are"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Amanda Joy Dykes.
Excerpted by permission of Baker Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews