Flat Water is the story of a man who has run about as far away as possible from what he fears the most, home. When Monty Marinnis was a teen, he lost the hero of his world, his big brother Max to a shark attack while the two were surfing. Now, as an adult and married, he must find the determination to return to his family and hometown to face that loss head-on, or else never grow up in the most important ways.
In Flat Water, author Jeremy Broyles first takes the reader on a ride from Nebraska, to the Pacific Ocean, about as far away from an ocean as you can get and still be in the United States. Along the way, as Broyles takes you closer to Monty Marinnis’ hometown on the California coast, he also brings you closer, not just in the distance but in memory, to the true reason Monty left in the first place.
Once back with his mother and sister, he discovers he’s not the only one who lost his brother that day. Max touched the lives of many people. But is Monty open enough to be sympathetic or does he decide it’s all about him?
Monty has kept the truth bottled up for years, even from his wife, Charlotte. She knows the basics but not the whole story. No one does. Not his mother. Not his little sister, Maggie. Maybe even he doesn’t know.
As the story progresses Monty recalls moments with his brother. We get to see Max through a little brother’s eyes while at the same time we as the reader can interpret those same moments from our perspective, be it our own life experiences that could be similar, or simply the view of an older age.
We get to meet other people who experienced the loss of Max Marinnis in different ways than as a little brother. We see how they responded and what they did with their lives. Did they run? Did they move on? Did they merely survive?
One thing about the story is it doesn’t always head where you think it will or even where you think it should, at least not according to what we’ve come to expect from a book or movie. But life does what life does and, if we’re lucky, we end up where we need to be to solve the problems we’ve refused to face. For some, like Monty, it’s a painful place, in more ways than one. But maybe that pain will be what helps him or could be what makes it worse.
Readers will end up with many opinions of what happens by the end of the book but it’s always good to take a step back and look at it not just through our own eyes and thoughts about what happens, but through the eyes of the characters, which is how a story is told in the first place. We need to get out of our way to see how another person copes with a situation. We’re all different and some cope in great ways, some cope by screwing up, and some cope just by living. And this book is about that, coping and facing reality. And perhaps some recovering as well. At least all of that is my interpretation.
You can find Flat Water at Amazon by clicking here.
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