Split Rock

Between redbirds, rocks, and supporting characters, Eger’s first book hits too hard with heavy-handed symbolism and story parallels. In 1997, forty-year-old Annie Tucker, wife and mother of three, inherits a house on Martha’s Vineyard from her beloved and recently deceased Aunt Faye. She decides to spend the summer there with her young children. Gordon, Annie’s ambitious husband, plans to come out on weekends from their home in Maryland, but a business crisis forces him back overseas, leaving Annie and the children on the island without him for most of the summer. Annie must deal with grieving her aunt, inheriting a dog, being a single parent, and the reappearance of Chase, her first love, while her romantic notions of the Vineyard—and people—are tested. Infidelity dominates the narrative; almost all of the characters are involved in some form of cheating or affair. Eger’s prose is smooth and polished, and story highlights include pivotal ocean scenes that pull the reader into the tumultuous water alongside Annie, but the book reads like part memoir, part fiction, and part romance novel, not squarely hitting the mark in any of those genres, so “split” is apropos. (BookLife)