Reed's Beach - Softcover

New Orleans Times-Picayune Profoundly affecting....Bret Lott writes about grief with as much accuracy and with as much wisdom as anybody who has ever addressed the subject....Deeply sad, but, miraculously, at once hauntingly beautiful.

Cleveland Plain Dealer Compelling....Lott masterfully (but never depressingly) delineates his haunted protagonists' oppressive pain....His prose is graceful, almost hypnotic, and the emotional tension is consistently high.

Boston Globe Poetic storytelling....lyrical....Bret Lott can be trusted with fragile objects. His gentle touch gives Hugh's and Laura's pain a heartbreaking purity.

Richmond Times-Dispatch Beautifully written....Bret Lott is a master of descriptive detail. Few writers have his gift for awakening all of a reader's senses.

Charlotte Observer Pure poetry....Reed's Beach is simultaneously one of the saddest and most beautiful stories I have ever read. It is doubtful any parent can read it without tears....Lott subtly strikes emotional chords [for] all readers....Yet another insightful, inspiring, marvelous novel to treasure from Bret Lott.

San Francisco Chronicle Bret Lott's much-applauded body of work examines the struggles of ordinary, middle-class Americans to cope with life's inevitable blows. In his fourth novel, Reed's Beach, Lott explores what is said to be the cruelest blow of all, the death of a child....Lott is a fine writer, capturing with subtlety, yet laserlike accuracy, the whimsy of life and the trauma of grief, the profound existential angst that loss triggers....Engrossing.

Washington Post Book World Lott captures the delicate interplay of past and present, the way that memories have of breaking into our thoughts; he understands the need to accept those memories as a source of joy, not pain, in the wake of unimaginable loss....Beautifully paced.

Hugh and Laura Walker could never have anticipated that the single greatest source of joy in their lives could so suddenly fill them with such unrelenting grief. The death of their only child, seven-year-old Michael -- struck by a car just seconds after stepping off his school bus -- has left them stranded in a sea of sorrow. With no emotional compass to guide them, the Walkers retreat to an old cottage near Cape May, New Jersey, where, separated from the daily reminders of their numbing loss, they hope to reenter the world of the living.
But lurking just below their sanity and resolve are memories -- not only of the simple joy that Michael brought to their lives, but also of the horror of his fatal accident. Buffeted by the conflicting winds of mourning and renewal, the Walkers see the once-solid foundation of their marriage begin to loosen. And Laura harbors a secret -- one essential to her self-preservation, but which could destroy all she and Hugh have ever been to each other. Reed's Beach weaves domestic tragedy with a strikingly original thriller of the heart, revealing the truths hidden deep within each of us, while holding out the elusive promise of love and hope.