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Overview
Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music. Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair—and the feelings she harbors for her sister’s husband.
To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar. Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, back on Edisto. For Eleanor, it’s a chance to revisit the place where she was her happiest—and to share her love of music with grieving Helena, whose sister recently died under mysterious circumstances.
An island lush with sweetgrass and salt marshes, Edisto has been a peaceful refuge for Helena, who escaped with her sister from war-torn Hungary in 1944. The sisters were well-known on the island, where they volunteered in their church and community. But now Eleanor will finally learn the truth about their past: secrets that will help heal her relationship with her own sister—and set Eleanor free....
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780451468116 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/06/2014 |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Sales rank: | 379,712 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The first time I died was the summer I turned seventeen. I remember the air being so hot you could smell the pluff mud baking in the sun, the scent sulfur-sweet and strong enough to curl your toes, the tall stems of sweetgrass listless, their tips bowed in submission. Blood sat like melted copper in my open mouth as I rose above my broken body, splayed like a rag doll beside the dirt road. Let me go, I thought as I hovered, weightless. But I felt the pull of a gossamer thread of conscience and retribution that tethered me to this earth. Before I heard the screams of the sirens and my mother’s wailing, I knew I wouldn’t stay dead for long.
I watched, suspended between this world and the next, as my mother bent over Eve’s body, my sister’s legs bent in ways they shouldn’t have been. Two paramedics worked on her, trying to push my mother away, while another noticed me, my body nearly hidden in the thick underbrush by the side of the road. He squatted next to me, his fingers reaching for the pulse in my neck. I felt none of this. I watched passively, as if I were a spectator in a movie theater.
I noticed that the paramedic was young, with thick blond hair on his head and muscled forearms that reflected the sunlight and reminded me of the sweetgrass. I was studying him so intently that I didn’t realize that he’d begun to perform CPR. Still I felt nothing. I was more focused on my sister and on my mother, who hadn’t looked in my direction yet. I hadn’t really expected her to.
And there was Glen, tall and slender and strong, moving between Eve and me, helpless to do anything, his frantic pacing only stirring up dust.
I heard my name called and thought for a moment it might be my father come to take me away—away from the two broken girls and screaming mother and the air that moved in hot, thick waves. Flies buzzed and dipped over the thin trail of blood from my open mouth, but I couldn’t hear them or feel them. I was thinking somebody needed to swat them away when I noticed for the first time the wooden church set back behind the trees. When Eve and I had walked our bikes down the dirt road just a short time before, giggling like the little girls we had once been, I hadn’t seen it. It seemed impossible that I couldn’t have.
The bright, whitewashed walls and tall steeple shone like a benediction in the relentless sunlight. The words PRAISE HOUSE were hand painted over the top of the arched red door, and a fence with a rusty gate swung as if spirits were passing through. It made no sense for the church to be where it was, nestled between the giant oaks and bright green undergrowth. But the white paint glowed in the sun as if brand-new, the wood steps leading up to the front door smooth and worn from the tread of hundreds of feet. Seated on the bottom step was a large woman with skin the color of burnt charcoal, her fingers working her sewing bone through the strands on a sweetgrass basket. She wasn’t looking at me, but I was sure it was she who’d called my name.
“Who are you?” I wanted to ask, but all I could do was watch her and her fingers and the grass as it was woven into the pattern of the basket.
Grasping the basket in one hand, she stood and began walking toward where I lay. She stopped for a moment, looking down on me, her shadow blocking the sun from my baking body like the angel of mercy. Slowly she knelt by the paramedic and leaned toward me. He didn’t seem to notice the woman as she bent close to my ear. Her words were clear, and I thought I could feel a cool breeze on my cheek from her breath as she spoke. “All shut-eye ain’t sleep; all good-bye ain’t gone.”
The pain struck me like a fist as I was pulled back toward earth, down into the body I’d inhabited for seventeen years, and gasped with one long, icy breath. I opened my eyes, meeting the blue eyes of the startled paramedic. I turned my head, searching for the woman, but she and the church were gone. Only the sound of a rusty gate and the lingering scent of the heat-scorched sweetgrass told me that she’d been there at all.
I heard my mother crying out my sister’s name over and over as I stared up at the clear blue sky, where a white egret circled slowly overhead. All shut-eye ain’t sleep; all good-bye ain’t gone. I didn’t know what she meant, but I reasoned I’d been given another lifetime to figure it out.
Almost fourteen years later, I was still trying.
What People are Saying About This
Praise for New York Times Bestselling Author Karen White
“One of the best new writers on the scene today.”—The Huffington Post
“[Karen White] gives you everything you could want.”—New York Times Bestselling Author Kerrelyn Sparks
“Sea Change is…riveting. Karen White [is] a master storyteller....She capitalizes on her strengths by using rich characters and poetic prose in a picturesque landscape.”—Fresh Fiction
“Readers will find White’s prose an uplifting experience as she is a truly gifted storyteller.”—Las Vegas Review-Journal
“White’s ability to write a book that keeps you hankering for more is her strong suit. The Beach Trees is a great book about the power of family and connection that you won’t soon forget.”—South Charlotte Weekly
“White…weaves together themes of Southern culture, the powerful bond of family, and the courage to rebuild in the face of destruction to create an incredibly moving story her dedicated fans are sure to embrace.”—Moultrie News (SC)
“A story as rich as a coastal summer…a great love story.”—New York Times Bestselling Author Deborah Smith
Reading Group Guide
INTRODUCTION
Thirty-four-year-old Eleanor Murray is consumed with guilt for causing the accident that paralyzed her sister-and for falling in love with her sister's husband. But when her boss offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, Eleanor accepts, hoping this good deed will help atone for her mistakes.
On the barrier island of Edisto, Eleanor bonds with Helena over their mutual love of music. Drawing the older woman out of her depression, Eleanor learns of her life in Hungary, with her sister, before and during World War II. She hears tales of passion and heartache, defiance and dangerous deception. And when the truth of Helena and her sister's actions comes to light, Eleanor may finally allow herself to move past guilt and to embrace the song that lies deep in her heart.
ABOUT KAREN WHITE
Karen White is the New York Times bestselling author of fifteen previous books. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and two children.
A CONVERSATION WITH KAREN WHITE
One of the recurring themes in your books is the bond between sisters. What is it about sisterhood that provides so much inspiration?
Because I grew up with three brothers, my life long wish was for a sister. I was horribly jealous of my friends who had sisters, knowing in my heart that my life would never be complete without a sister. My mother was the oldest of six children-five of them girls-and my fondest childhood memories are listening to my mother and aunts doing their "southern sister girl talk". It is their voices and mannerisms that I hear and see in my head while I'm creating my fictional sisters.
Your books often play with real events or historical facts-did The Time Between have a real-life inspiration?
For this particular book, I was inspired by a news story about two elderly twin sisters who'd once sung with Bing Crosby and were renowned beauties. And then, for some inexplicable reason, they stopped leaving their house, or returning phone calls, or answering their door. This went on for years until they were found deceased in their home-from natural causes. They had died within days of each other. I wanted to know why they'd become recluses-what happened? This question kept on pecking at my brain, and I knew that I had the seeds for a book.
Why did you decide to make Helena and Bernadett Hungarian? Is Hungary a country you've ever visited?
After deciding that the book would have World War II as a foundation of one of the plot lines, I knew I had to use Hungary. Hungary had a very unique and precarious position during the war. It was an Axis power, allied with the Third Reich as a lesser of two evils. The Hungarian government was more afraid of the Russian Communists than of Hitler, and so an uneasy alliance was formed. But it was because of this that the Jewish citizenry, although not immune, escaped much of the terror that Jews were facing in Nazi occupied countries. At least until the very last year of the war when Hungary tried to ally itself with the Allied powers and failed-leaving itself vulnerable to Nazi occupation, and the forced deportation of nearly 500,000 Jews in a three month period in 1944. It is as unbelievable as it is heartbreaking, and I knew it would be a powerful backdrop for my story.
I read a lot for the research for this book, but I was lucky enough to schedule a trip to Budapest while writing the book. I am so glad I did! I think the details and ambiance of the city really added to the "immersion" into the story that I like to provide for my readers.
The story begins with a near-death experience-is this something that has ever happened to you or someone you know?
I have never had a near-death experience nor do I know anybody who has. However, when I was in middle school, I read my first account of a near-death experience and I've been fascinated by the concept ever since. There is so much documentation on the subject, from people from all over the world and throughout history, that it does give one pause. And for me, I knew it would be great fodder for a novel.
There are no villains in this story, which is something the reader realizes once they "see" it from the other characters' point of views-is that why you decided on three different narrators?
Absolutely. When I first started the book, I thought I'd only have two narrators-Eleanor and Helena-since both plot lines revolve around them. But then I realized how important Eve's character was to both Eleanor's past and present. Seeing Eve through Eleanor's eyes made the reader very biased against her and I thought that made her very one-dimensional. The best way to flesh Eve out for the reader was to let the reader into her head.
Is it hard to write a story with no real villains, only protagonists?
I write as true to real life as I can, and in real life-with notable exceptions-there are no completely good or bad people. Everybody makes mistakes, or bad choices. It's how we live with them that make us the people we are. Eleanor and Helena have made mistakes and bad choices-but they have learned from them and are more interesting characters because of it.
What was the hardest thing for you to write in The Time Between?
Helena's story was the hardest part to write. It's truly heartbreaking. I had to put myself in her shoes, on a dark night with bombs falling from the sky, and figure out what she would have done with the information she had at the time-and there really was no other answer. The consequences were devastating, but not intentional. She's one of my favorite characters I've created because of how strong she is-how she was able to move forward despite the guilt she carried for so many years.
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