Finished Su 2/24/19- February, 2019 selection for the Contemporary Book Club
From the author's page on wikipedia-
"Maile Meloy (born January 1, 1972) is an American fiction writer. Born and raised in Helena, Montana, Meloy received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1994 and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine.
Meloy won The Paris Review's Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for her story, "Aqua Boulevard," in 2001;the PEN/Malamud Award for her first collection of short stories, Half in Love, in 2003;and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004. In 2007, Granta included her on its list of the 21 "Best Young American Novelists."
Her work has appeared in The New Yorker,and she is a frequent contributor to The New York Times."
She's know for The Apothecary Series Trilogy. Set in London 1952 in which a family from Los Angeles relocates to London. 14 year old Janie meets a mysterious apothecary and his son, Benjamin Burrows. The two go on adventures together. Sounds like Young Adult.
Meloy is also the older sister of Colin Meloy, frontman of The Decemberists and author of The Wildwood Chronicles.
Liv and Nora are cousins, best friends, and both married with two children. They all live in Los Angeles and Liv decides that they all should take a Xmas 2 week cruise down the coast to Panama.
Nora's mother had died of pancreatic cancer during the summer and wanted something different for Xmas. When Nora was very young, her mother remarried and didn't want children around, so Nora lived with Liv's family. They were like sisters. Liv's mother was a top litigator from Colorado.
In Panama the children are separated from their parents and kidnapped by criminals. The book is about how this tragedy affects the families.
The writing style reminds me very much of Harlan Coben, although Meloy is more Young Adult.
CHARACTERS:
Live is married to Benjamin; 2 children, Penny (11) and Sebastian (8)
Liv is a movie exec and Benjamin is a architect and structural engineer
Sebastian has type 1 diabetes and blood sugar must be carefully monitored. He has a pump?
Nora and Raymond are married; 2 children, Marcus (11) and June (6)
Nora is a very beautiful blonde and Raymond is a Hollywood actor
Gunther and Camilla are an Argentinian couple that they meet on the cruise ship.
They have two children: Hector (15) and Isabel (14)
The younger children idolize these two siblings.
Noemi is a young girl from Ecuador whose grandmother can no longer take care of her. She is being illegally sent to New York to live with her parents.
Chuy is her uncle. He probably has gang affiliations and is heavily tattooed.
Consuela Bolanos is the wife of a drug mule for the gangsters. This woman is killed when she confronts the criminals and demands money for the death of her husband.
Pedro is the guide from the cruise ship that has a sexual encounter with Nora that causes the children to be separated from their mothers.
When the ship reaches Panama the men decide to go golfing. Gunther invites Raymond and Benjamin to play with his Panamanian friend. The wives and Camilla want to go zip lining. On the way to the zip line place they get into a bus accident. Pedro says they are near a beach so the group decides to go swimming. Pedro serves the adults a rum drink and he and Nora leave to 'look for birds'. Liv falls asleep, Nora engages in mastorbation with Pedro, and the children are swept down the river when the tide changes. This is where the kids meet some criminals. The criminals have just buried the husband of Consuela Bolanos so they can't rescue the kids or they would be nailed for the murder.
Maria is the maid for the criminal's house
Oscar is Maria's teenage son and he gets the kids out of the house
Ofelia is Maria's daughter. This girl died of a drug overdose.
Kenji Kirby and Angela Rivera are Panamanian police that try to locate the kids. Angela was picked because she was fluent in English, but not because she was familiar with hostage/ kidnapping cases.
''HUMBLEBRAG" an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement whose actual purpose is to draw attention to something of which one is proud.
Nora says that Penny is a humblebrag and deserves to be slapped because she comes across as excessively bossy. I had never heard this word before and I think it's an excellent descriptive expression.
Benjamin's insulin port/ line?
Marcus- excellent with geography and probably on the spectrum
Noemi- 10 yrs old. Parents had gone to NY for two years
ECUADOR
Chuy gave Nomei with pink stuffed pig. Maria gave the real bunny to the kids.
Angela Rivera was from the sex crimes unit; lesbian
Raul; crazy, killed small animals as child- salamanders?
George- went to Berkeley
Benjamin's parents are Jewish; bad experiences during WWII. Mother very over protective father indifferent.
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