I was given this book by my friend. She loved it and thought I would since I grew up along the NC coast at that time. Wrong! I hated it; only finished it because of her. Almost nothing in this book factually represents coastal NC during that time. Every page or two there is something so glaringly wrong it made me question whether the author had even visited the region.
First of all, the coast described is unlike anywhere in NC, the vegetation is wrong, and the barrier islands are missing. It seems more like Georgia. And she mixes up freshwater and saltwater species and has the habitats wrong.
She fails geography, too. People keep running over to Asheville like it was the closest city. It actually was 7-8 hours from the nearest place on the coast. There is a trip to Greenville, NC. From the hotel names it seems she had it mixed up with Greenville in SC. None of the bus routes would work with appropriate timing from anywhere on the coast. And BTW guys rarely took a bus to Chapel Hill; we all hitchhiked.
No one would build a fire tower on a point into the ocean. Usually placed about ten miles inland
Getting electricity and indoor plumbing would have taken a much bigger effort. And the boat would have needed a license. And so much more.
But the big things that are missing are hurricanes. The book starts in 1952. As 1954 arrived, I expected a dramatic event. Nothing. No mention of Hurricane Hazel! Hazel is an iconic event in NC, destroying everything in its path. It would have destroyed the cabin and most everything in the village. There were three more hurricanes in 1955.
None of this addresses the incoherent behavior of the characters in this mess. This book has many flaws typical of a first novel: a too-clever-by-half plot, the alternating time settings, and an ending one can see for half the book.
Oh, we mostly call them crayfish or crawfish, not crawdads.
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