The Harbormaster's Daughter

The Harbormaster's Daughter
By Heidi Jon Schmidt (368 pages)
Published by NAL
Bookish reading: 3

Having very much enjoyed Schmidt's The House on Oyster Creek, I looked forward to reading her more recently published The Harbormaster's Daughter, set in the same Cape Cod town.

Overall? Meh. The book is well written, the characters adequately complex, but the novel never took off for me. In a town split between blue-collar locals and non-blue-collar outsiders, Vita--a 3-year-old girl--gets dropped off at LaRee's house when her mother is murdered. Vita, the embodiment of the local vs. outsider divide, grows up and has to come to terms with her identity, her town, and so on.

I think part of what I struggled with was the idea that in a small town, Vita had no clue who killed her mother---when absolutely everybody else did. As someone who also lives in a small town, a dog owner can't fail to pick up his or her dog's poop without the whole town freaking out about it via Facebook, listservs, town hall meetings, and general chit chat in the line at the pharmacy. So, I didn't buy Vita's naive ignorance.

Also, although the book was ultimately nicely written, I sense Schmidt really working to make the novel WORK. It didn't feel as effortless as The House on Oyster Creek.

Anyway, not my favorite.