Waterwoman by Lenore Hart: This took me an incredibly long time to read – not because it was hard to get into, but because it lived in my gym bag for reading on the stationary bike. Then I stopped going to the gym because I was too busy with the 2011 BookCrossing Convention, then a week later I tore up the ligaments and tendons in my ankle, thus ending my biking days for a long time. So the other day I decided to pull the poor thing out of my disused gym bag and actually finish it.
This is pretty much an atmospheric book, one you read for the setting more than the plot. It’s 1920 and Annie Revels’s father has just died, leaving her alone with her beautiful younger sister and ailing mother. They live on a small island off the shore of Virginia where their father made their living as a waterman: harvesting and selling oysters and crabs. It’s a hard life, but one Annie takes to fairly quickly, donning her father’s old clothes and doing everything herself. When she meets a man who sees her as an attractive woman for the first time in her life, everything changes. Not a whole lot happens, really. It’s kind of a sad tale, but not really because I never formed any real attachment to the characters. My personal fascination with the first two decades of the 20th century was mostly what kept me interested, as the descriptions of that kind of life at the time were quite detailed. In the end, I’d count this book as one that passed the time, but not one I’ll remember in a year.
Also posted on BookCrossing.