In novels or dramas about fraught romantic relationships, the narrative often feels bent toward disintegration, with the possibility–and sometimes the inevitability–of separation looming over every scene. What distinguishes Cynthia Newberry Martin’s début novel, Tidal Flats, is how it deeply it immerses us in one character’s process of figuring out what might be lost or gained by staying in a seriously challenged relationship, or by moving on from it. The outcome of her process never feels certain nor inevitable, and the result is a captivating and illuminating read.
The challenged relationship at the heart of the novel is the marriage between the central character, Cass Miller, and Ethan Graham, a photojournalist who has been making regular trips to Afghanistan, and in the process has fallen in love with the country. Cass has no desire to join Ethan on these trips, in part because her father, a lieutenant general in the Air Force, died there, and she fears the same fate for Ethan. Instead, Cass wants Ethan to remain in the States, and for the two of them to have a more ordinary life in which he returns home every night. Also, unlike Ethan, she is disinclined to have children.
The conflicting desires of Cass and Ethan existed almost from the start of their relationship, and in acknowledgment of this, the couple came to an agreement in advance of their marriage: that Ethan would take three more years to travel back and forth to Afghanistan, and during that time, Cass would, in Ethan’s words, “work on imagining our family. … And if you don’t change your mind about a baby, then we won’t have any. I get what I want first, but you get what you want forever.”
Imagining parenthood is an emotionally freighted endeavor for Cass, whose late mother had told Cass that she’d never wanted her, and blamed Cass for derailing her life. “I wanted to be an artist,” Cass’s mother told her, years before. “The next thing I knew, my clothes had spit-up on them, and I was changing dirty diapers. I was watching you. All day. Your father is never here.”
In essence, practically and emotionally, Cass has long been an orphan. But, fortunately, she has the support of a dear friend, who is struggling with relationship troubles of her own. Cass is also sustained by the close bonds she’s formed with the residents of Howell House, a home for elderly women that she manages. (For this reason, when insufficient funding threatens closure of the home–another challenge that Cass must address over the course of the novel–it feels like more than her job is at stake.)
But the core crisis of Tidal Flats comes near the end of Ethan’s three-year run of trips to Afghanistan. Not wanting to reveal the specifics, I’ll just say that he breaks his agreement with Cass in ways that prove devastating for her and that force her to decide whether she wants to continue with their relationship. Staying with Ethan would require her to accept conditions she’d never agreed to, and to find a way to live with his betrayal; neither possibility feels assured. Cass’s process of figuring out how to proceed with Ethan is arduous and complicated, and as Martin takes us through it, step by uncertain step, she offers an affecting, authentic-feeling examination of what’s involved in confronting, truly and meaningfully, a serious breach of trust. An unexpected benefit of this process, for Cass, is that it gets her to reconnect with who she is on her own, apart from Ethan, and to consider her needs, apart from his.
Additionally, through her interactions with the residents of Howell House, Cass gains a new understanding of what family is. It’s not necessarily blood relations, or whom you marry; it’s those with whom you form meaningful, sustaining connections–like the women of Howell House, for Cass. In one lovely scene, after sharing some of her personal difficulties with one of these women, Atta, Cass says, “I’ve never been enough for anyone.” Atta replies:
Through this scene and many others, the novel offers a thoughtful, moving examination of the unexpected insights that can follow from having your world upended. They just might make it possible to find your way forward, and out of the darkness.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":▪ Novels or dramas that explore difficulties in marriages or other romantic relationships
▪ Stories about coping with betrayal or other traumas
