"To Be Sung Underwater"

Do you have a love from your youth -- your teen years -- that you'd like to revisit?  Tom McNeal's novel, "To Be Sung Underwater," tells the story of Judith Whitman from the point of view of her present life and marriage.  However, into this life with a "perfect job" and  seemingly perfect marriage but a not so perfect daughter (but then she is a teenager so that might explain a lot!) creeps slowly a seed of discontent surrounding a bedroom set her husband and daughter want to dispose of.  It is a bedroom set from Judith's teenage years when her parents had divorced and she made the choice to leave her mother and go live with her father in Nebraska.

As Judith finds a place to stow this bedroom set where she can also visit it, she begins to revisit her past -- the memories of her parent's divorce, her decision to move in with her father as well as her memories of her time with him, and her first romance with Willy Blunt with the pale blue eyes and the easy smile and sense of humor.  They were planning to marry but Judith's decision to go to California to college changed all that and they drifted apart and she married someone else.  Revisiting memories and the past has its drawbacks -- Judith begins to suffer from headaches and her family and work also suffer as she decides to find Willy and other friends from her past.

Judith does get her chance to revisit the past in a way and that visit comes with some surprises.  Did she make the right choice to leave it behind in the first place and will she decide to do so again?  Does she have regrets?  How does revisiting the past change her present and her future?  This is a very thought provoking book and that will keep me pondering for some time. 

The author has another book, "Goodnight Nebraska," that I plan to look for next.  That book won the James A. Michener Memorial Prize as well as the California Book Award.  McNeal has roots in Nebraska and currently lives near San Diego with his wife and sons.  Check out his web site at www.mcnealbooks.com.     pazt