Salt Water

This isn't just a coming of age story. It is a story about a son and an adolescent, a father and a husband and a man, and a wife and mother. Its a story about how lives are intertwined, separate and yet significantly connected, all at the same time. Its simple and elegant and definitely a quick read.

What a wonderful story! Not your usual "coming of age" narration, but a stark tragedy. The first line tells you where the book will take you, but not when and how.The suspense is built up magnificently, with strong characters and believable action.

This gem of a novel is about the varieties of love and its inevitable loss, about parents and how little their children understand them, about the brittle mysteries of human connections and how gratuitously the links can be snapped, about a man trying to figure out who and what he is by looking back at the painful anti-Eden of growing up. In the 80s, I reviewed Charles Simmons's "Wrinkles" for the LA Times. Some perceptive publisher should reissue "Wrinkles" as a companion piece to "Salt Water." This book is a rich mine lode for book clubs everywhere, for people who yearn for good writing, as deceptively clear as fresh water, for all of us who are still trying to figure out who we are, how we got here, who our parents are, and who our children.

a former editor of the new york times book review, charles simmons is a man who chooses his words well. this book, like the others that preceded it, is well written, thoughtful, and, as is always the case with his work, masterful. my hat is off to him. i hope that others readers discover his brilliance.