The Captain’s Daughter by Meg Mitchell Moore

• Title:  The Captain’s Daughter
• Author:  Meg Mitchell Moore
• Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
• Pages:  320
• Pub. Date:  July 18, 2017 – Doubleday
• Source:  Publisher; NetGalley

Description:  Growing up in Little Harbor, Maine, the daughter of a widowed lobsterman, Eliza Barnes could haul a trap and row a skiff with the best of them. But she always knew she’d leave that life behind. Now that she’s married, with two kids and a cushy front-row seat to suburban country club gossip in an affluent Massachusetts town, she feels adrift.

When her father injures himself in a boating accident, Eliza pushes the pause button on her own life to come to his aid. But when she arrives in Maine, she discovers her father’s situation is more dire than he let on. Eliza’s homecoming is further complicated by the reemergence of her first love–and memories of their shared secret. Then Eliza meets Mary Brown, a seventeen-year-old local who is at her own crossroad, and Eliza can’t help but wonder what her life would have been like if she’d stayed.

Filled with humor, insight, summer cocktails, and gorgeous sunsets, THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER is a compassionate novel about the life-changing choices we make and the consequences we face in their aftermath. (publisher)

My take:  The loss of her mother when Eliza was young was instrumental in shaping her life. Raised by her lobsterman father in a small coastal Maine village, Eliza couldn’t wait to leave for college. Now she lives in an affluent Massachusetts community with her husband and two daughters where her life revolves around her children and their activities and her friends. Life changes when Eliza receives a phone call with the news that her dad was injured while working on his boat. She heads up to Maine to take care of him. That’s where she comes in contact with people from her past who make her wonder what might have been if her life had gone in a different direction. This was a rather quiet novel that kept me turning the pages. I had to know what would happen with a few of the characters. There’s a young woman, a girl really, who reminds Eliza of herself when she lived in Little Harbor. I thought Eliza’s husband was interesting in his changing professional life. I enjoyed Eliza’s daughters and even came to appreciate her mother-in-law. Perspective will help a reader and a character do that. I’d recommend this book to fans of Meg Mitchell Moore, a coastal setting, and contemporary fiction about families.

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