At The Breakers: A Novel

by Mary Ann Taylor-Hall

Overview

In At The Breakers, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall presents Jo Sinclair, a longtime single mother of four children. Fleeing an abusive relationship after a shocking attack, Jo finds herself in Sea Cove, New Jersey, in front of The Breakers, a salty old hotel in the process of renovation. Impulsively, she negotiates for a job painting the guest rooms and settles in with her youngest child, thirteen-year-old Nick. As each room is transformed under brush and roller, Jo finds a way to renovate herself, reclaiming a promising life derailed by pregnancy and a forced marriage at age fourteen.

At The Breakers is a deeply felt and beautifully written novel about forgiveness and reconciliation. Jo Sinclair, put through the fire, emerges with a chance at a full, rich life for herself and her children, if only she has the faith to take it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813173382
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	03/06/2009
Series:	Kentucky Voices
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	601 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is the author of How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-Yos, which received Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Award, and Come and Go, Molly Snow. She is the recipient of the Barnes&Noble Discover Great New Writers award, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kentucky Arts Council.

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is a recipient of the Barnes&Noble "Discover Great New Writers" award and the author of How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-yos, which received Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Award; and Come and Go, Molly Snow. She is the recipient of a PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kentucky Arts Council.

Table of Contents

Part One: September
Part Two: November
Part Three: November&December
Part Four: Christmas Week
Part Five: January
Part Six: Late January
Part Seven: January 28

Editorial Reviews

In Taylor-Hall's long-awaited second novel (Come and Go, Molly Snow, 1995), a single mother flees an abusive boyfriend and finds life-healing respite in a quaint seashore hotel. Jo, whose sorry track record with men began at age 14 when, pregnant, she had to drop out of high school to get married, is now finally back on track at age 42. While waitressing double shifts in New Brunswick, N.J., she's managed to complete her bachelor's degree over nine years and has writerly ambitions. Her four children-the oldest is 28-have three different fathers. Most troubled is daughter Wendy, 18, a mercurial neobohemian right out of Rent. Jo never learned what happened during the three weeks Wendy went missing at age 14. (Wendy refused to talk about it after a private detective rescued her.) Jo's latest boyfriend Hank, a trucking executive, has domineering tendencies she unwisely ignores. After a too-brief birthday lunch with Wendy in New York City, Jo runs into whimsical, 60-ish, symbolically named Victor Mangold, her former writing professor. Their innocent flirtation is observed by a friend of Hank's. Hank accuses Jo of infidelity and rapes her. Traumatized and terrified, Jo escapes to The Breakers, on the Jersey shore, where she earns a hotel manager job by helping with renovations. Among the hotel's denizens are the usual charming eccentrics, including a 92-year-old former stripper and a genteel Russian viola player. A winsome younger gas-station owner almost thrusts her into another no-win blue-collar liaison. But Victor lures Jo back to Manhattan. Then an alarm sounds from The Breakers: Wendy is about to marry Jean-Luc, a gay Haitian musician, to help him get a green card. What begins as awoman-in-jeopardy plot shifts focus, as the Hank stalking threat simply dissipates. Except for the disclosure of Wendy's harrowing secret, the second half of the book, dominated by the impossibly sprightly Victor, is pleasant but predictable. Taylor-Hall's incisive, witty prose redeems potentially mawkish material.

Kirkus Reviews

It is a fast read and difficult to put down.

Bowling Green Daily News

Taylor-Hall's voice rings true and the characters are fully developed and intriguing. I didn't want to end my visit to the world Taylor-Hall created. For me that's a successful novel. A perfect read for the summer.

Armchair Interviews - Elizabeth Bright

This is a tale of reconciliation, forgiveness, hope and love written by one of Kentucky's most intriguing writers.

Tucson Citizen - Larry Cox

A mother's blood guilt runs the heart of this powerful novel. When it is at last resolved, a pale flower of happiness blooms, the best any of us can expect late in a rich, complicated life.

Sallie Bingham

Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is a deeply gifted writer whose stories will change your life—don't miss anything she writes. Her carefully crafted characters in At The Breakers will extend and enrich your sense of family and connection/disconnection forever.

Naomi Shihab Nye

At the Breakers presents a complex, often mystifying look at someone hoping to overcome past mistakes. Author Taylor-Hall... skillfully rides the contour of human emotions to provide a story of a character we really want to succeed.

Kentucky Monthly - Steve Flairty

There's wisdom in Taylor-Hall's insistence that plunging into the depths of trust and love...is as essential as it is risky. At the Breakers is as eloquent as it is joyous and intelligent.

Louisville Courier-Journal - L. Elisabeth Beattie

There are many good reasons to read At the Breakers: the perfectly drawn setting (having grown up on the South Jersey Shore, I recognized it immediately), the careful handling of complex relationships between an imperfect mother and her grown daughters, and the vivid cast that populates the hotel; but what delights me most is the character of Victor Mangold, a kind poet with great joie de vivre, with whom I couldn't help falling in love.

Ellen Bass

Taylor-Hall creates a cast of characters... who are undeniably wonderful, casting a party that the reader does not want to miss, despite the pain and loneliness that accompany them. And the reason is that along with that pain comes companionship, kindness, empathy and the opportunity for love in its varying forms.... [Taylor-Hall's] prose is as rhythmic and entrancing as the movements of the waves.

Chevy Chaser - Linda Hinchcliffe

The author of Come and Go, Molly Snow returns with a courageous, well-rendered novel about forgiveness and reconciliation. Its heroine, put through the fire, comes out with a chance for happiness—if she can muster the faith, courage, and optimism to take that chance.

Joseph-Beth Booksellers Newsletter

At The Breakers is beautifully written, a deep exploration of the complex demands and joys and risks of all kinds of love.

Kim Edwards

"At The Breakers is beautifully written, a deep exploration of the complex demands and joys and risks of all kinds of love."—Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter

From the Publisher