Rescue (Shreve) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Shreve gets deep inside these characters, and her insights draw us into their lives…The relationship between the secretive, hard-drinking, oddly vulnerable Sheila and the down-to-earth small-town hero is wonderfully etched. Shreve creates a little world, peoples it with believable characters, and puts them through agonizing and joyful moments without a false note or a dissonant figure of speech.
Brigitte Weeks - Washington Post


Rescue is Shreve at her best....Shreve knows love may be intense, life-changing and passionate, but it is never enough. Her characters bruise each other as much as they comfort each other.... Rescue is full of themes Shreve loves: How a moment can change a life; loss and love; forgiveness and pain.
Mary Foster - Associated Press


A paramedic and the troubled young beauty he saves propel Shreve's engrossing latest...With the insistent thrum of life-and-death EMT calls as background, Shreve's vividly told tale captures the deep-seated fears of mortality and loneliness that can drive us to test the bounds of family and forgiveness.
Joanna Powell - People


In Shreve's smooth if unsurprising latest (after A Change in Altitude), EMT Peter Webster is drawn to a woman he rescues at the scene of a one-car drunk driving accident. Webster is well intentioned, but alcoholic Sheila, with her dangerous history, could prove beyond his efforts to save her, though the two embark on an affair that evolves into marriage and parenthood with the birth of their daughter, Rowan. Sheila's drinking, meanwhile, escalates until she causes another accident, this time with young Rowan in the car, causing Webster to send Sheila away to avoid jail time. Years later, with not a word from long-gone Sheila, Rowan is a typically turmoil-ridden high school senior—moody, her grades slipping, drinking—and her tribulations prompt Webster to reach out to Sheila to help his daughter. Webster and Sheila are more type than character—good-hearted man, damaged woman incapable of love—and the paramedic rescue scenes feel mostly like opportunities for Shreve to show off her research. Still, the story runs like a well-oiled machine and should sate the author's fans.
Publishers Weekly


Shreve's 11th work of fiction, following A Change in Altitude (2009) centers on rookie paramedic Pete Webster, whose life is irrevocably changed when he becomes romantically involved with Sheila, a woman he rescues from a car wreck. Shreve displays her talent for research through her emphasis on Pete's work as an emergency medical technician and once again displays her ability to create engaging characters. Narrator Dennis Holland, meanwhile, does an excellent job of voicing Pete; Sheila; their teenage daughter, Rowan; and several minor characters in a seamless manner that allows for Shreve's superb storytelling to shine through. Shreve's many fans and all appreciators of good fiction will be pleased. —Gloria Maxwell, Metropolitan Community Coll.-Penn Valley Lib., Kansas City, MO
Library Journal


The prolific Shreve brings her customary care to this thoroughly absorbing, perfectly paced domestic drama. Alternating between the life-and-death scenarios Pete encounters on the job and the fraught family tension between father and daughter, Shreve pulls readers right into her story. —Joanne Wilkson
Booklist


In Shreve's latest (A Change in Altitude, 2009, etc.), an EMT medic falls in love with a woman he saves and ends up raising their child alone. At 21, (Peter) Webster has just begun a career as an EMT in Hartstone, Vt., where he still lives with his parents, when he's called to the scene of a one car smashup. Despite himself, Webster is drawn to the victim, Sheila, and breaks protocol to seek her out. Drunk when she crashed, Sheila is a lovely 24-year-old from Chelsea, Mass., running away from her abusive cop lover. She is also a pool hustler who has lived by her wits all her life. Webster's not sure she genuinely loves him the way he loves her, but ultimately he doesn't care. When she becomes pregnant, he puts aside his plans to buy the land he's dreamed of owning and marries her. Despite misgivings, his parents are supportive, and their baby daughter Rowan is a delight. At first life seems to be perfect for the young couple. But Webster begins to see signs that Sheila is drinking again as he confides in both his parents and his partner at work. The marriage turns rocky as Sheila spirals down. The crisis occurs when she drives drunk, with Rowan in town, and causes an accident with injuries to both Rowan and the other driver. To avoid jail, she agrees to leave Rowan with Webster and disappear. Every woman's ideal of the nurturing male, Webster devotes his life to Rowan. Eighteen years later, Rowan is a high-school senior, and the joy of Webster's life. Then her life goes off the rails, in part because she thinks she's inherited Sheila's alcoholism. Webster selflessly tracks down Sheila, who has stopped drinking and become a painter, because he realizes Rowan needs her. A pale novel, heavy on uplift and padded with episodes of Webster responding as an EMT to various crises, but it's hard not to root for such a WASP mensch.
Kirkus Reviews