Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara is set in 1930s Massachusetts as the rest of the world is on the cusp of war with the Nazis and Boston is hoping to alleviate its water shortage by creating a new reservoir along the Cascade River. Painter Desdemona Hart Spaulding lives in the sleepy little town of Cascade, which has been a target of lawmakers looking for water over the last decade. Her life is nothing like she expected as her family falls on hard times, and she makes a life-altering decision to marry Asa to save her father and her home. What she fails to realize is that some decisions are made for you by circumstance and fate in a cascade of changes that you can either fight or ride.
From the moment readers meet Dez, they know that she is conflicted about her new role as wife. She makes her husband’s breakfast and tries to care for her father, but her mind wanders to her studio, her paints, and her canvases, making her lose track of time as she dives into the colors and scenes she creates. Asa is hard to grasp as he seems to want to be oblivious to his wife’s struggles, but is forced to see reality when his wife makes decisions that place them both in the spotlight as the town looks for ways to save itself from drowning.
“Their once-fashionable resort town with its pleasant waters was looking more and more like the ghost valley that was invading dreams and even the pages of her sketchpad.” (page 3)
O’Hara’s novel is not just about the cascade of decisions and twists in one’s life, but also the unexpected changes that face a country in a depression on the verge of a possible world war — at a time when sentiment against Jews is turning negative as many people lose their jobs and are thrust into poverty. Things spiral out of control for the Spauldings and the town, but Dez is determined to follow her innate desire to pursue her art in spite of her duty to her husband and her father’s legacy as she hopes to turn public sentiment in favor of saving Cascade from the water department. The parallels between the river and how it can shape a town and how events can shape people are deftly made in O’Hara’s lyrical prose. She intertwines Shakespeare’s plays and famous quotations easily, tying Dez to her father’s legacy throughout the novel even when she has all but abandoned it in favor of an affair of art.
While Dez can seem immature in her clinging to Jacob, a traveling salesman, it is clear from her relationship with Asa that she’s never been in love with anything other than Shakespeare as seen through her father’s theater in Cascade and her own painting. She is an artist that needs to feel substantial loss and pain before she can fully come into her art. O’Hara has created a novel about the tensions between duty and desire and following one’s dream. She has captured the struggle of artists, who unfortunately are too often misunderstood by non-artists, to achieve the time necessary to create without the guilt of failing to meet the obligations of family life and other relationships.
Through gorgeous descriptions and painting techniques, O’Hara plunges readers into the light-filled studios and landscapes of Dez, as well as into her nightmares, her guilt, and her nostalgia for things past. Through quick brushstrokes and scraped canvases, the novel transports readers into muddied waters and into the bold color of an artist’s life. Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara is a debut that shimmers like the rushing river over the rocks of the waterfall with its quiet power shaping Dez and what was once Cascade, Massachusetts.
***On a completely different note, I was totally in LOVE with this cover. It was so utterly distracting with its water shapes in the profile image and how the boulders blended in as the woman’s hair. I was enamored.***
About the Author:
Maryanne O’Hara was the longtime associate fiction editor of Ploughshares, Boston’s award-winning literary journal. Her short fiction has been published in magazines like The North American Review, Five Points, Redbook, and many anthologies. She has received grants from the St. Botolph Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and her story collection was a finalist for 2010′s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She lives on a river near Boston.
Find out more about Maryanne at her Website, her blog, and connect with her on Facebook.
This is my 83rd book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.
On that different note, I totally love the cover as well. 🙂
Thanks for being on the tour Serena!
Trish, that is my favorite line from Serena’s review. It’s absolutely true.
Ti and Julie, I hope you read and enjoy.
Thank you, all.
The struggle of the artist is so interesting because it’s so extreme. Like you said, Dez “needs to feel substantial loss and pain before she can fully come into her art.” As hard as it is to relate to that kind of extreme, as I think about it I think I relate more than I realize!
Thanks for being on the tour!
Thanks for taking the time to read the review. I really enjoyed this one.
This is new to me, but I think you’ve convinced me with your stellar review.
I hope you read it and let me know what you think.
I was just telling another blogger that I’ve never even heard of this one, but it sounds pretty good.
Ah, but now that you have heard of it, you must read it!
Almost done with this one and really enjoying it, so I didn’t read your review yet other than to scan whether you liked it:)
I can’t wait to see what you say in your review.
Your reviews are always so eloquent and I loved what you had to say about this one. I too was drawn to the cover immediately. I believe they made a great choice with it and the relevance it has to the story itself.
Thanks, Staci. I really loved this cover so much I was distracted from reading to really stare at the cover and uncover its mysteries.
Thanks, Staci. The cover has been really successful, and we were going to keep it for the paperback, but now we may change it. I’m curious to see what the design team comes up with.
O no! I love the cover. But if they change it, I hope it is something equally powerful and resonant with the story.
I love the cover, too. I’ll have to borrow this one from you at some point.
Just don’t get as distracted as I did by the cover! LOL
EEE, I’m so glad you enjoyed this one — I’m envying everyone on the tour. I adored this book — it was rough going at the time because I got so frustrated with Des at moments, but now, some four months later, I still can’t shake this book. So.good.
I was frustrated with her at times, but I really connected with her on an artistic level.
Audra—Thank you again. I was glad to have your enthusiasm and review four months ago, and I’m still grateful for it! Happy holidays.
I’ve been drawn to this book because of that gorgeous cover so I know just what you mean. The book sounds great!
I hope you pick it up. I think you’d like it.
Thanks, Kathy. I hope you read and enjoy.
Serena, thank you so much for this wonderful review! I especially love that you focused on the heart of what the book is really about–the struggle of the artist.
I’ve been getting all kinds of emails from readers, but one I most appreciated was from a working artist in Florida who wrote to say how much she loved the book. She identified with all of it, she said, and wrote: “I know some people think I am selfish or stubborn, but I just know I have to paint!”
Thank you Leslie, Beth, Janel, and Mystica, for the kind words.
Maryanne
As an aside, can I say that I am have been so impressed with how easily all of you bloggers are able to summarize books? You should all work for publishers, writing jacket copy.
Thanks for stopping by and the kind words. Writing jacket copy would be fun.
I enjoyed this book. An interesting, multi-layered plot with an unexpected (for me, anyway) twist in the end.
I saw the end coming along, but I do like how it came together!
Lovely review, Serena. I’ve heard many good things about this book!
I really loved it.
I love reading stories about artists. This one sounds lovely with all of the descriptions of her paintings as well as her life.
I just loved the interwoven elements of her art and her life in Cascade. It was gorgeously done.
I dont know about the cover but I like the storyline.
I love the cover. I think its more beautiful up close.