Book Review: Heavy Weather by Normandie Fischer

Heavy Weather 

by Normandie Fischer 

Paperback: 408 pages 

Publisher: Sleepy Creek Press; 1 edition (March 10, 2015) 

  

Purchase Links

Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble

 It takes a town to save a child.   That town is Beaufort. 

 Annie Mac’s estranged husband vows that nothing will stop him from getting his baby girl. Not Annie Mac and certainly not that boy of hers. 

 Only four blocks away, Hannah Morgan lives in comfort with her husband and dog, making pottery and waiting for her best friend to come home. When she discovers the two children cowering in the bushes and their mama left for dead, it doesn’t take her long to rally the sleepy town of Beaufort, NC, and to set her coterie of do-gooders to some extra-strength do-gooding. Add in Clay, a lonely police lieutenant yanked out of his comfort zone and into the heart of this small family, and who knows what will happen?

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Maybe she wasn’t qualified, maybe she couldn’t do much, but the folk wielding power would have to flatten her if they wanted to pawn Ty and Katie off on Social Services.”

“I think that’s what we all want more than anything else in the world.  To belong to someone.  And to have someone who belongs to us.”

“… he’d done the gene pool a huge favor by eliminating someone so dumb.  Daddy always said there weren’t room enough in the world for all the fools inhabiting it.”

“This time platitudes wouldn’t work either.  If she’d heard them once during and after her pregnancies, she’d heard them a dozen times.  ‘They’re in heave.  God much have needed them more than you and Matt.  It wasn’t meant to be.’  If she’d believed that about God, she’d have signed up for atheism so fast necks would have snapped.”

“The sapphires are for your eyes.  The diamonds for your heart, multifaceted, shining… Mine.”

My Review:

Five Stars is not a high enough rating for this marvelous book – quality writing of this caliber calls for at least a double rating of 10.  It was breathtaking.  I adored every sentence of this meticulously crafted story, and there was not a wasted word on the 403 superbly written pages.  The narrative was so descriptive and enthralling, I could hear the dog’s bark, see and feel the lightning in the sky, and smell the water in the bay.  Ms. Fischer’s characters are appealing, knowable, clever, enticing, and expertly developed and detailed.  The story was deeply moving if not intoxicating, with numerous tragedies and losses that fathomed my emotions in a manner that had me in tears several times – a remarkable achievement given my rather cold heart.  I ached for the little boy most of all, denied a childhood, yet ever insightful, aware, and protective of his family.  But my favorite character proved to be the unexpectedly complex policeman with a penchant for the finer things, and excellent tastes in food, creature comforts, music, and the soft touches and kindnesses that were exactly what these broken people were in dire need of.  Heavy Weather is my first Normandie Fischer read, but it certainly will not be my last.  I hope she is busy working on a sequel as I am already in need of a return visit to Beaufort.

Empress DJ

About Normandie Fischer

A life-long sailor, Normandie has been writing and editing professionally since the seventies. She studied sculpture for several years in Perugia, Italy, before returning stateside to complete her degree with special honors in English. When they’re not visiting grown children who have scattered elsewhere, Normandie and her husband divide their time between their waterfront home in NC (where she takes care of her mama) and their waterborne sailing home, Sea Venture, lately returned from Pacific Mexico. She has three women's fiction books now: Becalmed, which was the first Carolina Coast novel; Sailing out of Darkness; and now the second Carolina Coast story, Heavy Weather. 

 Find out more about Normandie at her website, connect with her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.