P.S.
2 total works
From the author of the international number one bestseller I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE comes a magnificent novel of a life turned upside-down by tragedy – and the search for a way to carry on in the aftermath.
Caelum Quirk is a middle-aged schoolteacher. Students at Columbine High School generally respect him and turn to his wife Maureen, the school nurse, when in trouble. When he has to return to his home town for the funeral of his beloved aunt, Maureen promises to join him the next day - but she goes to work that morning, and that’s when the shootings happen. She hides in a cupboard, unable to see what’s happening, but listening to the students being taunted, then killed.
Life can never be the same again. In the face of Maureen’s trauma, Caelum searches for meaning, delving into his own family history and discovering that nothing was as he’s always been told. As the couple inch towards recovery and suffer setbacks, the stories of Caelum’s redoubtable ancestors illuminate how he came to be the man he is, and how he and Maureen might live in the future with freedom and dignity. With no easy answers, Caelum gradually comes to an understanding of who he really is and what he can believe in.
As her wedding day approaches, Annie Oh finds herself one morning staring at a bed covered in Vera Wang wedding dresses, at the mercy of hopes and fears about the momentous change on the horizon. this is not Annie's first walk down the aisle. She has just emerged from a twenty-seven year marriage to Orion Oh, which produced three children, twins Andrew and Ariane and daughter Marisa. Annie has been trying to reach her ex-husband, as she wants to make sure that he is all right. Orion, a psychologist with a crippling need to help others, keeps assuring everyone that he is fine. But how can he be? Annie, a self-taught artist, is about to marry a woman named Viveca, the sophisticated and seductive art dealer who understands her work and has helped make her enormously successful. the Oh children have different responses to their mother's upcoming wedding and her new partner. But when Viveca, who specializes in outsider art, discovers a painting by Josephus Jones, a self-taught African American artist of the 1950's and '60's, in the Oh family home in three Rivers, Connecticut, the already difficult relationship between Orion, Annie, and Viveca becomes even more fraught. Jones's canvases, and the story of his prematurely shortened life, come to play an unexpected role in the life of the Oh family. On the very day of the wedding, as its members struggle with their new roles in the reshaped family landscape, secrets are shared and shocking truths come to light. A sweeping epic novel from one of America's most beloved writers, WE ARE WAtER pulls you into the emotional center of each richly drawn character. Even Annie's impending marriage, apparently the source of the Oh family drama, turns out to be merely the catalyst that uncovers old hurts and renews past anger. An intricate and layered portrait of marriage and family, tempered by compassion, big-heartedness, and humor, WE ARE WAtER recalls Richard Russo's EMPIRE FALLS and Jonathan Franzen's FREEDOM. Once again, Wally Lamb has dug down deep into the complexities of the human heart to explore the ways in which we all live, love, and find meaning in our lives.