Recommended Reading:  

Sara Gruen’s At the Water’s Edge

One of my favorite reads in recent years is Sara Gruen’s 2007 novel Water for Elephants.  The story, in which she vividly recreates the world of the traveling circus of the 1920’s and 30’s, is both a coming of age tale of young Jacob Jankowski who runs away to join the circus, as well as the story of a stormy love triangle between Jacob, the beautiful horse rider Marlena, and her fearsome, cruel husband, a circus boss.  Rosie, the featured circus elephant, becomes a prominent character who figures into several of the novel’s key events.  It is also the story of a world on the edge of change as the attraction of traveling circuses is on the wane.

Gruen’s latest offering, At the Water’s Edge, is a compelling read with many things in common with the earlier book.  Maddie Hyde accompanies her husband Ellis and his best friend Hank to Scotland in search of the famous Loch Ness Monster,that, like Rosie, figures in key scenes throughout the novel.  Also, the elusive sea creature soon becomes a metaphor for other kinds of monsters – Hitler (It’s 1945) and, more significantly to Maddie, Ellis.  The three come from money and status in Philadelphia and the origin of the trip is Ellis’ feud with his father (who as a young man claims to have photographed the famous sea creature but is later discredited) – a chance to redeem both his father’s reputation and his own standing after disgracing himself at a society party.  Hank and Ellis’ treatment of the locals who run the only inn in town reflects their own self-satisfied sense of superiority and lack of sensitivity to anyone but themselves.  Their stay in Scotland is comprised of a series of revelations for Maddie about her husband and his friend, about herself and about the greater world from which she has been sheltered. 

Scales fall from Maddie’s eyes as she comes to first see a world beyond her own sheltered one.  On the ship over, she encounters wounded soldiers and in Scotland, she is faced with the scarcity of food and fuel, the need for a bomb shelter when the sirens go off, and the dread that a telegram can bring. While the two men go off for days at a time leaving Maddie behind at the inn, she begins to develop friendships with the two women who cook and clean there, Anna and Meg, and out of both friendship and boredom, she offers to help with the running of the end, winning their admiration for her willingness to get her hands dirty and support as she grows increasingly alienated from her boorish husband.  As in Water for Elephants, a love triangle slowly begins to develop as Maddie develops a friendship with Angus, the man who runs the little inn where they are staying.

Gruen again is masterful at recreating a sense of time and place.  Even though it was the 1940’s, the novel reinforced my desire to visit Scotland.  Her characters are well developed and the juxtaposition of a creature with the humans who, in this case pursue it, again serves to highlight human folly and the power of the natural world.