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Love Song to Cape Cod
Water Music: A Cape Cod Story follows a twelve-year-old girl whose family is falling apart in all directions who finds solace in her music and her love of Cape Cod. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I confess that Water Music was inspired by personal experience: my deep love for the many summers I spent on Cape Cod with my family, as well as my love for the cello and the music that has nourished me my entire life.
Like Lily, I had a marvelous elderly cello teacher each summer. And like Lily, my family had its share of discord. I wanted to explore how a girl, growing up in the 50s, might try to make sense of friction in an extended family, and how the women in her life were navigating (or resisting) the roles open to them.
Why choose this place and time for the setting of the story?
In a way, Water Music is my love song to the Cape Cod of the 50s, before Kennedy’s presidency and the National Seashore brought it to the attention of mainstream vacationers. But the 50s were also incredibly strict about expectations for women’s roles, and I wanted to explore how a young girl might try to make sense of all that.
It was important to me to include the sinking of the Andrea Doria in 1956. She was youthful—she had completed only one hundred crossings. In contrast, the Ile de France, who came to the Doria’s side, had launched a quarter of a century earlier. I saw in that relationship a potent—and poignant—mirror of the longed-for mother-daughter relationships in Water Music, both between Lily and her mother, and between Lily’s mother and grandmother.
I imagined the motif of the tether—the bridge that tethered Cape Cod to the mainland as well as the searchlight that “tethers” the Ile de France to the Andrea Doria—to be expressions of fragile family bonds. Especially between mother and daughter.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The 50s were brutal on smart, talented, educated women. I saw in Lily a confusion about how to understand her own prospects versus those of her mother. And how, in music, they both found the potential to redeem both their faults and disappointments.
When working on Water Music, the idea of competition—both as a destructive force and an impetus for growth—wouldn’t let go of me. For me, the rivalry between Lily’s father and his brother contrasts with the competition Lily frames for herself while learning the cello.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I’m working on a novel about a stolen cello. It’s a love story with a mystery. In it, I try to look at which loves serve to define us and which ones we must let go of. Competition—and what it can drive us to do—also plays a role in this book. There is also a mother-daughter subplot. I guess that’s an itch I keep needing to scratch!
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Thus twelve-year-old Lily Grainger, while safe from ‘communists and the Pope,’ finds her family suddenly adrift. That was the summer the Andrea Doria sank, pilot whales stranded, and Lily’s father built a house he couldn’t afford. Target practice on a nearby decommissioned Liberty Ship echoed not only the rancor in her parents’ marriage, a rancor stoked by Lily’s competitive uncle, but also Lily’s troubles with her sister, her cousins, and especially with her mother. In her increasingly desperate efforts to salvage her parents’ marriage, Lily discovers betrayals beyond her understanding as well as the small ways in which people try to rescue each other. She draws on her music lessons and her love of Cape Cod—from Sagamore and Monomoy to Nauset Spit and the Wellfleet Dunes, seeking safe passage from the limited world of her salt marsh to the larger, open ocean.
Water Music: A Cape Cod Story
In Water Music: A Cape Cod Story, readers are swept into a poignant tale of a young girl, Lily, who strives to keep her family intact amidst the financial turbulence caused by her father’s ambitious house project. This decision creates ripples that strain the delicate threads binding the family members. The impact is so profound that it leaves Lily feeling destabilized, akin to trees buffeted in a tempest. The emotional landscape of the family becomes all the more turbulent as suppressed sentiments come forth, leading to impassioned confrontations.
Marcia Peck crafts a captivating narrative, drawing parallels between the discord within the family and the ever-changing moods of nature. An evocative scene, wherein an intense altercation between Lily’s parents coincides with a raging storm, is particularly striking. The obliteration of a tent belonging to Lily and Dodie serves as a poignant metaphor for their spiraling despair. Peck’s narrative voice, characterized by its understated eloquence, resonates with readers. For example, her description of Lydia’s piano playing – “Her fingers pressed the keys quietly, tenderly, and the notes slipped away into the night like dazed little fishes, released into murky water” – paints a vivid auditory and visual tableau.
One of the novel’s strengths is its portrayal of intricate human relationships, particularly the nuanced dynamics between mother and daughter. Peck doesn’t resort to black-and-white characterizations; instead, she presents each individual in shades of gray, compelling readers to empathize even when choices are less than ideal. A consistent motif throughout the narrative is music. It not only offers solace to Lily in her most vulnerable moments but also becomes a pivotal element that bridges growing chasms between characters.
Water Music: A Cape Cod Story is an evocative exploration of family, resilience, and the redemptive power of music. It’s a must-read, certain to resonate with a wide range of readers.
Pages: 246 | ASIN : B0C15CNBMG
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