A riveting novel about loyalty and self-knowledge, and the conflict between who we want to be to others and who we must
be for ourselves.
Carrie Bell has lived in Wisconsin all her life. Shes had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother,
the same boyfriend, Mike, now her fiancé, for as long as anyone can remember. Its with real surprise she finds that, at age
twenty-three, her life has begun to feel suffocating. She longs for a change, an upheaval, for a chance to begin again.
That chance is granted to her, terribly, when Mike is injured in an accident. Now Carrie has to question everything she
thought she knew about herself and the meaning of home. She must ask: How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign
of strength or of weakness to walk away from someone in need?
The Dive from Clausens Pier reminds us how precarious our lives are and how quickly they can be divided into before
and after, whether by random accident or by the force of our own desires. It begins with a disaster that could happen, out
of the blue, in anybodys life, and it forces us to ask how we would bear up in the face of tragedy and what we know, or think
we know, about our deepest allegiances. Elegantly written and ferociously paced, emotionally nuanced and morally complex,
The Dive from Clausens Pier marks the emergence of a prodigiously gifted new novelist.
