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It's a fresh start for Delores Walker when she boards a Greyhound bus bound for Florida. Leaving the Bronx far behind, she's headed for sunny Weeki Wachee Springs, frayed roadside attraction in danger of becoming obsolete with the opening of Walt Disney's latest creation, only miles up the road. Always more suited for a life underwater, Delores joins a group of other aquatic hopefuls in this City of Live Mermaids, where she discovers a world of sequined tails and amphibious theme shows that even Disney couldn't dream up. It's in this fantastic place of make-believe and reinvention that Delores Walker becomes Delores Taurus, Florida's most unlikely celebrity.
Bringing together an eccentric assortment of outcasts, poseurs, and underdogs, this wise and poignant novel conjures up a time in America when anything was possible, especially in the Sunshine State. A story of family, chasing dreams and finding your way, Swim To Me will have you believing the impossible—even in mermaids from the Bronx.
Carter follows her plucky New York journalist's memoir Nothing to Fall Back Onand first novel The Orange Blossom Specialwith another sweet story of self-reinvention. Delores Walker, 17, leaves her troubled home in the Bronx of 1973 to become a mermaid at Weeki Wachee Springs in Tampa, Fla. There, in a series of fortuitous events, ugly duckling Delores becomes the star of the show, a local hero, the most popular girl in town (although she remains unfailingly nice) and the catalyst for an unlikely family reunion. Carter jumps from head to head without providing much insight into her characters, including the slimily manipulative and ambitious TV producer, Alan Sommers, and the gentle circus giant, T. Rex, who's little more than a vehicle for folksy wisdom. But Carter is less interested in character development than in storytelling, which she does with aplomb, as Delores faces fame-related conflicts, and resort owner Thelma Foote has wisdom to spare. The results are sensationalist, predictable and satisfying. (Aug.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Shawn Ferguson
reviewed Swim to Me on November 05, 2008
Swim to Me
1.5 stars. The bulk of this novel takes place in 1972. SOMEONE SHOULD HAVE TOLD Betsy Carter that WALT DISNEY DIED in 1966. He wouldn't have been alive to comment on Weeki Wachi! It was a fast read, so I kept going, but I didn't care for the rudimentary prose. Not just the prose, but the plot and the characters also were under-developed. I didn't feel connected to any of the characters. Maybe because the point of view kept jumping between so many of them. The good things are that it's clean, (G-rated) and has a happy ending. But some things in the plot are so unbelievable. At one point there is a severe storm, which threatens to become a hurricaine, so people are told to evacuate their homes. Yet when the weather channel people get to the location by the ocean, there is a "little boy playing in the surf"! During a hurricaine? And while the dad is close by? So, he gets swept out and then saved, but we aren't told how he happened to be out "playing" in the first place. So Ok, but the book brings the boy and father back to the news channel for an interview the next day, and we still aren't told why they were out there in the first place! Because we needed a dramatic rescue, that's why.
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