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    Safe Within: A Novel
    Safe Within: A Novel
    Safe Within: A Novel
    Ebook391 pages6 hours

    Safe Within: A Novel

    By Jean Reynolds Page

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    One of today’s most compelling voices in women’s fiction, acclaimed novelist Jean Reynolds Page delivers a story of unanticipated familial ties, exploring with compassion and humor the hope, forgiveness, and sometimes just plain tolerance necessary to hold a family together. Safe Within is rich with heart and Southern atmosphere, as a loving wife, facing an almost unbearable impending tragedy, returns with her husband and son to Lowfield, North Carolina—and to a cabin high up in the trees—where she must contend with, and somehow make peace with, an infuriatingly eccentric mother-in-law. Readers touched by this author’s earlier work—including the much beloved The Space between Before and After—can rejoice, and fans of Jodi Picoult and Jacquelyn Mitchard will be adding another name to their list of favorites authors.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJun 12, 2012
    ISBN9780062101464
    Safe Within: A Novel
    Author

    Jean Reynolds Page

    Jean Reynolds Page lives with her husband and three children in Wisconsin.

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    Reviews for Safe Within

    4/5

    21 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      ”Now there was nothing to do. The empty stretch of hours ahead frightened her. She’d pledged till death, but it didn’t end there. Love didn’t end anywhere. It simply endured the absence of the beloved.”Safe Within is a book about end of life issues, as Carson comes back home to North Carolina to live out his last weeks. No; this book is about widowhood, as Elaine struggles to live in a world with half of herself gone. No; this story is about a son who hasn’t found himself yet. No; this is about an elderly woman whose son has died, leaving her with decades of regrets. Yes, this novel is about family. A family real with love and hurts, memories and wishes, hope and heartache. A lakeside treehouse in North Carolina is the unlikely abode built by Elaine’s father, and in which she grew up. It is there they return for peaceful lake view talks as time dwindles out. Now back in their old hometown, Carson’s mother comes for visits with her son, while still holding prejudices against her daughter-in-law and grandson. Jean Reynolds Page offers a real slice of life in the pages of this book, presenting characters whole in their personae, in a setting vivid, with a story slow and captivating. Loved it.
    • 4/5
      Carson is dying of pancreatic cancer when he asks his wife Elaine to take him back to the small North Carolina town they both grew up in and to the quirky treehouse on the lake that is Elaine's family's home. Going home transports them back into the small community with its gossip and undercurrents. It means Elaine and Mick, Carson and Elaine's adult son, will have to face Carson's mother Greta, nearly blind but still holding a grudge against them, and that the past will surround them every step of the way at a time when they most need love and compassion.Elaine and Mick haven't spoken to Greta in more than twenty years. The source of the rift is that Greta has never accepted Mick, believing, despite Carson's assurances to the contrary, that Mick is not Carson's son. Although her animosity towards this stubborn old woman hasn't waned, in the wake of her beloved Carson's death, Elaine tries to extend an olive branch to Greta, knowing that it is what Carson would have wanted. After all, she and Mick are all that remain of Greta's family. The one thing that she draws the line at though, is explaining the truth surrounding the rumors over Mick's paternity, insisting that that information was between she and Carson and not for public consumption. And although she wants to do the right thing by her mother-in-law, Elaine is still prickly, defensive, and struggling with forgiveness.As Elaine is trying to negotiate a tentative truce with her mother-in-law, Mick is feeling rudderless and completely adrift. He's met a girl who used to idolize him when she was small but she's 18 and beautiful and as interested in him as ever now. As he wonders if he can pursue something with her, rumors from the past about an old girlfriend, Kayla, rise up to challenge him. Kayla, who was of mixed race and whose family was extremely poor, was his first great love but also the girl who made him face the worst of himself. Although she is long dead in a car accident, he is still coming to terms with the hurt he caused her and the reality of who he was then. That her sweet six year old little brother might in actual fact be her son instead of her brother has sent him reeling, questions about Kyle's paternity and his responsibilities adding to his uncertainty about his life and future.Greta, mother-in-law and grandmother, so certain of her convictions, is fighting battles on many fronts. She is in a dispute with her neighbor over her land. He wants it so he can expand his alpaca operation and she has no desire to sell, not even entertaining a single thought for his continued offers. She is perfectly content living with her long-time friend Mattie, who is a sort of housekeeper, companion, and lately Greta's eyes as well. Having Mattie's family living in the guest homes out back means that Greta always has company and she doesn't have to look too closely at her determination to shun her daughter-in-law and only grandson. But then Mattie has a stroke and her family moves to town, and although they are concerned about Greta, Mattie is their more pressing concern, forcing Greta to entertain the notion of relying on Elaine and Mick.Flipping between the past and the present, the narrative fills in Elaine and Carson's relationship and marriage, the foundation of the so many loving and now much mourned years, fleshing out Carson in a way that would only be possible through other characters' views if the entire novel took place after his death. Elaine, Mick, and Greta, as main characters are all sunk in their own grief but their faltering attempts to right their worlds in the wake of Carson's loss are realistic and human. They are each multi-faceted and their relationships with each other are complicated by history and feeling. The plot is intricate and Page weaves the many threads together deftly. Her writing is true, beautiful, and detailed and she has captured masterfully the deep ache of grief as it stands alongside continued living. Having tapped into a small town setting, she has placed her characters at the mercy of the secrets and gossip that have eaten at the edges of their lives for so many years. But with the whimsical treehouse above the lake, she has also given these characters a nest of imagination and uniqueness in which to find safety, forgiveness, and the ability to move forward with hope. Engrossing and frequently humorous, this compassionate look at living after a loved one's death amidst the tangle that family can be is a wonderful read.
    • 4/5
      I received Safe Within in exchange for a review. I found that I was having trouble reading for any length of time, in the beginning. It wasn't that the story was bad, it just seemed to be too slow to unfold. When I kept at it I found the story got moving, for me, about one quarter of the way through. At that point, the story came to life and I found that I was thinking of excuses to sit and read, not the opposite. The story is about death, but it is also about the living and the lives that need to be rebuilt after a death. While the book was sad, it had many light, funny times. I felt that the underlying theme was that gossip can take on a life of its own and destroy many lives. When a situation is seen and taken out of context, it breeds curiosity and when no one sets the record straight from the onset, it can be used as a weapon for someone wanting to hurt another.Carson has lived a wonderful life, with a loving wife & son. He also has a mother he loves deeply but his wife, son and mother do not get along. By way of rumor and gossip, Greta, Carson's mother has held a deep seated anger toward his wife, Elaine and through that she has chosen not to have a life with her only grandson, Mick. Carson has always asked his mother to trust him and to let Mick in, but she will not. Carson has cancer and upon his death Elaine wonders if his mother will be out of the picture for good. But, that and actions beyond her control bring them closer instead of further apart. While all are dealing with the grief of losing a father, husband or child they also have their own lives to rebuild, a lost past to overcome and the knowledge that righting a wrong can sometimes be too much to deal with.
    • 4/5
      Safe within is about a North Carolina family dealing with Elaine's husband's death (Carson); with some family dynamics thrown in. Although the story gets off to a slow start, it does pick up. I'm glad I stuck with it. It does have twists and turns, and I found the book intense at times. Although the ending left me hanging, I would recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      So happy that I stuck this book out and finished it... not only finished but came to really enjoy it and the ending left me at peace... just as I feel the characters were. It did drag a little after the first 100 or so pages and I thought I might put it down, but the treehouse kept me so entertained, I will look for her next books and check out the ones she has already published.
    • 4/5
      Elaine Forsyth was raised in a tree house, and that is where her soon-to-be-late college professor husband wants to go to die. His mother, with whom Elaine has been estranged for twenty-five years, lives nearby. One night before Carson dies, mother Greta turns the neighbor's alpacas loose, and Elaine must go spring her from jail. Elaine's son, Mick, is also there for the death. After Carson's death, relationships are re-defined within the family and also with neighbors and friends from the small North Carolina town in which the book takes place. The plot has some interesting twists and turns along the way. This would make a good read for a summer vacation if one needed to while away some hours.
    • 4/5
      Safe Within tells the story of a family dealing with the death of Carson who is the husband and father of Elaine and Mick. Carson's mother Greta has never liked Elaine and suspected her of cheating on her son. When Carson dies, Elaine trys to mend fences, but Greta is not having it. Greta cannot see well and has a helper, but when the helper has a stroke she has no choice but to accept Elaine's help. I found the story to be unbelieveable and a little too neatly wrapped up. I didn't like the ending either. It left you hanging and the story did not seem finished.
    • 4/5
      Wow, this book might be for anyone who might not get along with their inlaws, because I am pretty sure Greta at the beginning of this book can trump them all.The tension between Elaine, Mick and Greta are so thick I was actually uncomfortable reading about this at first, especially when you mix in the grief caused by the death of a parent, husband and son. Carson Forsythe was greatly beloved by his family - his mother Greta, his wife Elaine, and his son Mick. Unfortunately, Greta had always hated Elaine and her boho parents, and consequently hated Mick, not believing him to be Carson's son. There was so much bad blood between the families, you wondered if things could ever be reconciled. I had my fingers crossed the whole book for this to happen, for who better to grieve with and share stories with and heal with then the people who loved the deceased the most? This book kept you wondering what could be next, and was emotionally intense at times to read. However, I couldn't put it down, rooting for this family to heal together the whole time.
    • 4/5
      Newly widowed, 40-something Elaine and her 20-something son Mick are trying to figure out how and when to restart their lives after the death of Elaine’s husband--Mick’s father--Carson. Meanwhile they are living in Elaine’s childhood home, a tree house built by her bohemian parents near a lake in the North Carolina hometown that Carson wanted to come back to for his final few weeks. Apart from the usual difficulties of life after the loss of a spouse, Elaine is forced to deal with her stubborn, hot-headed mother-in-law Greta, a woman she’d just as soon forget. Greta has never liked Elaine or her ‘hippie” parents, never believed that Mick was her grandson, and recently she has been acting erratic enough to get herself arrested by releasing her big shot neighbor’s herd of alpacas. Both Elaine and Mick have secrets and unresolved issues from the past that are making it more difficult to move forward. With its nuanced look at issues of trust and rebuilding a meaningful, connected life after loss, its interesting, multi-dimensional main characters, and its appealing, well-evoked Southern small town setting, Safe Within has a lot going for it. A mild mystical quality occasionally surfaces that isn’t completely to my taste: an abused puppy who trusts no one instantly bonds with the unwilling person who needs him most, blue lights appear in the sky just before someone dies, and Greta’s home companion is eerily insightful about someone she’s barely met. That personal preference quibble aside, this is a penetrating and heartwarming book with an ending that is satisfying without tying everything up too neatly. I received a copy of Safe Within for possible review from the publisher, but there was no obligation and the opinions are all mine.

    Book preview

    Safe Within - Jean Reynolds Page

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