It’s been five years since Guy’s adored daughter, Freya, was killed in an accident. Five years since he and his wife, Judy, made a suicide pact, then broke it and went their separate ways. Five years of living in the past by recalling the days with Freya and living in an imaginary present by writing a fictional journal about Freya growing up under the loving watch of her parents. “I wanted to see how it might have turned out, you know, if things had been different.”
Page’s highly figurative style offers recurring metaphors for getting lost, escaping, and being reborn. Wild animals abound — from sharks swimming nearby to a stallion rampaging across a peaceful field to wild dogs roaming the shore to a sodden goldfinch rescued from a briny detour.
In Guy’s engaging journal, he chauffeurs Judy and Freya across the southern United States. Together the adventurous trio skims highways, listens to country music, shops, eats doughnuts and hamburgers, and admires swimming pools. “They should be crossing America with the naturally curving grace of a line strung between the two points of arrival and departure. But instead the curve seems to be turning downward, as if running out of energy as it falls. Flying on one engine, he thinks, almost deliriously, they’re bound to crash. But where? Where can they go?”
As Guy tenderly trails the fantasy family into the future, a real drama unfolds on the Lara, the adjacent yacht where lovely Marta and her beguiling college-age daughter, Rhona, are grieving the recent death of Howard, Marta’s husband and Rhona’s father. At one point, Guy dives into the night cold sea to save Rhona from drowning. He seems romantically drawn to both mother and daughter.
