Maryanne O'Hara

Devour this book and savor it at once. You will not be disappointed.

Cascade is the culmination of the artistic viewpoint of the world triumphing over as many obstacles as an artist can endure. Faced with a rushed marriage, encountering a soulmate of a stranger, and possible elimination of the town she grew up in, Desdemona Spaulding becomes embroiled in the attempts to save Cascade from total destruction.

What makes this novel stand out is the way O'Hara treats artistic enterprise as of primary concern to the artist no matter the situation in which she may find herself. O'Hara also manages to meld as intriguing a plot into Dez's ruminations on creating art as any I have ever read. Pulsing with both the lush life that teems within small towns, the novel is part mystery but wholly literary fiction. O'Hara's treatment of 1930's Americana deserves as wide an audience as the novels of Richard Russo. The small town aspect of the novel is reminiscent of Russo's Mohawk or Empire Falls and the towns of other American chroniclers -- Mary McGarry Morris, Ron Rash, and Jane Smiley.

Yet Dez is also attracted to Europe and that beacon of interest to so many artists of all generations -- New York City.

Find out yourself Dez' solution to balancing art and life, duty and desire, the home fires and the siren call of the creative impulse. Let Cascade engulf you.… (altro)

I grabbed this book from my TBR shelf at random after finishing A Fine Imitation by Amber Brock and ended up putting it aside to read something else between them; it was too similar for a back to back read. Cascade is set in a small, fictional Massachusetts town in the Great Depression and follows the story of one Desdemona Hart, a woman who married her husband in order to take care of her dying father. Now that her father is gone, she’s struggling- to be happy with a man she doesn’t love and who doesn’t understand her and her passion for painting, to figure out how to save her father’s closed theater in the midst of the Great Depression as the threat of destruction returns to their little town- the state needs a reservoir, and it looks like the little town of Cascade will be the one destroyed in order to create it. Like Brock’s work, I find myself unable to connect with the adulterous protagonist. The style of prose is almost distant; not quite aloof but not in the moment, either. Time passes, Dez makes mistakes and choices, and by the end she’s still in love with a man who is not her husband. The entire resolution is disappointing and unsatisfying- the author, through Dez, notes that a long held mystery is always a let-down in the mere revealing of it, but the secret in Portia’s casket- a prop from the theater and a box the dying father gives to his only child, to open when the theater is reopened- leaves a hollow feeling in my stomach.

The piece also falls flat for me because despite being set primarily during the Great Depression, the period never really seems to touch the protagonist’s life too deeply; the story could be set in almost any other time period, I think, and not be better or worse for it. I think that in a period piece, the period needs to be important, it needs to be a vital character in the narration, or else why bother? Maybe it would feel more present if I were as familiar with the 30s as some other periods- but then, the average reader is not going to be an expert on any given period, and shouldn’t need to be, for a work to speak to them. If I could assign this book a particular moment, it would be something to read on a bleakly grey day, where there’s rain promised but it never comes, where a restless mind just needs something to tug it along. A decent read, but nothing that will stay with me.… (altro)

Maryanne O'Hara's debut novel, Cascade, is a beautifully written tale of sacrifice, desire and trying to find one's place in the world. Set in small town Cascade, Massachusetts during the Great Depression, Cascade is the story of Dez Spaulding, a newlywed who realizes too late that the life she has begun to carve out for herself, one chosen primarily to secure the well-being of her bankrupt father, is not the life she wants. A former student of art with big dreams, Dez finds little satisfaction in her role as homemaker. But it is not until the unexpected death of her father and the arrival of fellow artist Jacob Solomon in Cascade that Dez begins to question her chosen path. When Cascade is identified as the frontrunner to be flooded to create a reservoir for Boston, Dez comes to view the possible destruction of the town as an opportunity to create a new life for herself. While the town fights to stay alive, Dez is caught between her desire to follow her dreams and fulfilling her husband and society's expectations of her.

One of the greatest strengths of Cascade is O'Hara's ability to bring small-town, Depression-era America to life. While Dez's situation is secure due to her husband's profession as a pharmacist, many of Cascade's citizens are struggling to make ends meet and the hard-times have left the town a shadow of its former self. I thought the characters to be well-drawn, particularly Dez, whose internal conflict is clearly evident. While I didn't always agree with the choices Dez made, especially those that hurt other people, and I was often frustrated by her, she is a sympathetic character. In the 1930s, the opportunities afforded to women for a career and independence were few, and for this reason I can't really fault Dez for marrying Asa even though she wasn't in love with him. Another aspect of this novel that I appreciated was the incorporation of historical detail that conveys to the reader the events taking place in Europe, events that would lead to the start World War II.

While I liked this novel immensely, Cascade is not a book I would describe as an enjoyable read. In fact, the strongest emotion this novel evoked from me was sadness - sadness for Cascade and its citizens, sadness for Dez and her husband, and sadness for Jacob.

Recommended to all fans of historical fiction.

Note: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.… (altro)