Jim Scoresby’s parents wanted him to evacuate New Orleans before Katrina hit, but he stayed behind to help out an old friend, jazz musician Freddy “Foghorn” Beasley, an insulin-dependent diabetic whose own family had abandoned him. Sadly, the hurricane proved more devastating than Jim had expected, and in its aftermath, he was forced to make a new start with a friend in New England. Through luck and hard work, he found himself doing very well at the Henretty and Henretty brokerage, being taken under the wing of its charismatic, vigorous owner, Walter Henretty, and even dating Walter’s daughter Maureen. But when Walter offers him a dream job running his yacht brokerage and helping to teach sailing to disadvantaged youth, Jim discovers that Katrina has left him afraid of the open ocean. In addition, he is torn between his bright-seeming future in New England and his sense of being called home to Louisiana. Can he sort out his ambitions and his desires, and determine where he is meant to be?
Protagonist Jim himself is a likeable, warmhearted character, and colorful minor characters like Freddy and Walter liven up the story, adding touches of brightness even to its sorrowful moments. The author clearly has a deep love for both, Louisiana and New England, scattering interesting facts and historical anecdotes throughout the story. The book is wistfully charming, with some very touching moments, especially near the beginning and the end.
The emotional intensity, however, is somewhat lessened by the author’s rather formal speech style – “The weeping yet smiling grey-haired man and the pale, black-haired woman who had once given him life burst onto the porch,” for example. Hall’s regular digressions into the scenery and history of the areas he writes about, while interesting in their own right, can sometimes be distracting, taking energy away from the main storyline. Also, three of the problems at the heart of the story are only lightly dealt with, brushing over conflicts that really should be more central and more intense. The first of these is Jim’s conflict with his father – his relationship with him in the book includes passing references to a couple of quarrels, but the details and emotions are missing, and their few conversations in the book, after the very beginning, are largely cordial, even affectionate, leaving the reader wondering why Jim feels so alienated from him. Second, Maureen’s more lovable aspects are never shown to the reader – at the moment, she is portrayed pretty exclusively as cold, distant and unloving, leaving it unclear why Jim thinks she’s worth staying for. Thirdly, Jim’s fear of water is referred to, but doesn’t seem to actually affect his actions in any way, making it basically an extraneous element without real relevance to events.
WATER LESSONS is a sweet story about a man finding himself after tragedy, and sorting out where he is meant to be.
~IndieReader.