When we meet Mara, the narrator of Sara Freeman’s TIDES, she appears to be running, but we don’t know from what. She appears to be grieving, but we don’t know why. And she appears to be alone, but we don’t know what has caused her solitude or whether it’s by circumstance or choice. Mara arrives in a coastal town that reminds her of where her mother grew up. It’s the kind of place that’s overrun by summer people from Memorial Day through Labor Day and becomes essentially a skeleton of itself in the fall and winter months.

"TIDES is a slim novel, but its structure encourages slow and reflective reading.... The book is deeply sad, recounting as it does the dramatic and painful end of one family."

Mara checks into a dormitory housing the area’s many summer workers, spending her days aimlessly. She goes to the bar, drinks too much, hooks up with a couple of random strangers --- and tries not to succumb to the memories and sadness that rush in from time to time and threaten to overtake her.

After she’s forced to leave the dormitory when it shuts down for the season, Mara answers a “Help Wanted” ad at the town’s wine and cheese shop. Its owner, Simon, is a few years older than her, another solitary soul who seems to be harboring a loss of his own. Over the long and lonely winter, they forge a fragile bond that they fear and know is temporary, but it buoys them up as long as it lasts.

The book’s title is appropriate. As we learn more about Mara’s past, and see her present and future play out on the page, it seems that some of the patterns of her life are repeating themselves and old cycles are taking shape again. She is coming to the end of one phase of her life, and perhaps embarking on a new one, with an opportunity to make different choices and evince a different outcome this time around.

TIDES is a slim novel, but its structure encourages slow and reflective reading. Broken up into brief sections, often just a sentence or two, the text is set on the page like a series of short vignettes or reflections, surrounded by white space that encourages pauses for contemplation. The book is deeply sad, recounting as it does the dramatic and painful end of one family. But it’s also strangely hopeful and beautiful, as Mara makes the brave decision to move forward on her own, into a future that is far from certain but ready for her to make her own.