Review: Swimming Between Worlds (by Elaine Neil Orr)

My Rating:  4 stars

This was a book that took me awhile to get into and some sections were so slow-burn that it took some effort to push forward and continue reading, but I'm glad I stuck with it because in the end I was rewarded with a good story and characters that are hard to forget.  Set in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the late 1950s/early 1960s, the narrative revolves around 3 main characters:  Tacker Hart, a gifted engineer and all-around popular boy-hero whose life is transformed after returning from a trip to Nigeria;  Kate Monroe, a young college graduate dealing with the loss of both her parents when a family secret she discovers in a letter threatens to tear her already fragile world further apart; and Gaines, a young African-American man whose separate encounters with both Tacker and Kate change the courses of their lives forever.  The story is set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement, only in its early stages here, yet so important in driving the course of the narrative forward.   The author Elaine Neil Orr did a great job blending the historical context of the social unrest at the time that triggered the Civil Rights movement with the fictional story of Tacker and Kate's complicated relationship and the difficult path they must take in order to find love.   I also like the way the author developed the characters in the story, especially Tacker, as we were given the opportunity to delve deep into his thoughts as he tried to reconcile his experience in Nigeria with what he was seeing in his own community back home in Winston-Salem.  Gaines' impact on him was profound, as was the friendship of Samuel, one of the young Nigerian men Tacker met on his assignment, and to be honest, I enjoyed reading about these friendships more than Tacker's at times conflicted love relationship with Kate.  Perhaps this is because I wasn't too fond of Kate due to her being so self-absorbed most of the time (which I did find a tad bit annoying in some scenes), but I think it also has to do with the story being written in a way where the reality of what was happening in society at the time and Tacker's place in it trumped the love story, which was put more on the back burner.  I guess in a way, this was mostly Tacker's story and while Kate's role was important to the story as well, I felt the significance was more in her character reflecting the attitude of society at the time when it came to issues of race and equality and how that attitude differed so greatly from Tacker's.   

This was my first time reading Elaine Neil Orr's work and I am definitely interested in reading more of her books.  The writing was well-done and though I felt some parts were a little overwritten, that didn't affect my enjoyment of the story at all.  There were also the themes of "water" and "swimming" that were huge parts of the book, though the author worked this into the story so well that I actually didn't realize the subtle references throughout the book until I was nearing the end.   My one complaint was that I sensed a certain level of emotional restraint in the telling of the story, reflected more significantly in some characters' narratives (Kate for example) over others, and while this didn't detract a whole lot from the events or how they unfolded in the story itself, it did affect the emotional impact that a story like this one should / could have had on its readers.  The biggest example of this was in the ending, which was unexpected (and quite honestly a bit shocking), and I feel should have elicited a far more emotional response, but the way it was written felt a bit glossed over.  With that said though, this was overall a thought-provoking read, another book that, despite its setting in an earlier time period, is very much timely, especially given everything happening in our world currently.  Having grown up in the U.S. studying and reading about the Civil Rights movement primarily in history books, I appreciate the fact that books like this one help put into perspective the real-life impact of that history to ordinary lives – one of the aspects I love most about historical fiction.  This one is definitely recommended!

Received ARC from Berkley Books via Penguin First-to-read program.