conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Between the Tides about Andre, Famous, Harbor with the genre: Children's Books, Growing Up & Facts of Life.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is the author of numerous childrens storys, including Andre the Famous Harbor Seal and How People Learned to Fly. She lives in Rockport, Maine.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Catherine, Seaboro, Reed with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'Between the Tides'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first two paragraphs for this story.. Start with the sentence 'Between the Tides
  I closed my eyes so I wouldn't cry in front of him'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Between the Tides
  I closed my eyes so I wouldn't cry in front of him. "You shouldn't have done this." I opened the cover and stared at the words, First edition, Book Club, 1960. I ran my finger over the date, over the yellow-edged pages, and then I did look at him. "I know how much first editions cost...this is crazy."
  All I could do was nod. Forrest sat on the wicker couch next to me. "Your dad would love for you to read it again, I'm sure."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My movements were slow, uncontrolled, as I fell at Ellie's kitchen table and sobbed. Ellie finally reached for me, wrapped her hands in my ponytail. I choked trying to stop the tears, the pain, the feeling that I was plummeting below the surface of life.
  Now was the time to say I was sorry. I fell to my knees in front of Ellie. "It is all my fault. Oh, God, Ellie—you must hate me."
  My clothes clung to me with the briny, tangy odor of the river when I walked through the front door of the inn, attempting to sneak past the library and down the hall to the Lighthouse Room.
  I stood still for a long moment and noticed details—small and trivial—all around me: Forrest's hair mussed and curled around his face, a lamp shade crooked on the side table, dust on the windowsill below the air-conditioning unit, a lace tablecloth with a coffee stain.
  Forrest's face moved with concern, and I wondered if he would care if he knew what I'd done. If I walked toward him, held my arms out, he would hold me and allow me to settle into him, tell the terrible story of what had just happened on Boyd's dock. But instead I took a step backward, because although I knew he'd offer empathy and friendship, it would be false comfort; he didn't know the full truth of what I'd done, of who I was.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Then, of course, there is each character's life choices after Sam's death—Ellie living in love, even with a broken heart; Jim choosing death; Boyd allowing anger to consume him; and Grayson continuing to live and love the family he had next to him (although he did withhold the truth from his daughter). I feel great empathy for each person in this novel, as each is dramatically changed in a single instant.
  Q. Margaret Leary and Ellie Loughlin take very different approaches to child rearing and life. What influenced your choices in these women, and were they based on anyone you know?
  A story in the Gospel of Luke tells of two sisters, Mary and Martha, who are preparing to welcome Jesus into their home. Mary sits at Jesus' feet and listens. Martha, the ultimate homemaker, decides she must make the perfect feast; she is too busy to sit and talk, too distracted to appreciate the people in her home. Jesus says Mary has "chosen the better part."
  Most women are a little of both Mary and Martha, sometimes able to enjoy life, and at other times so busy they can't take life in. As twelve-year-old Catherine observes, Ellie and Margaret are opposites in their approach to life, yet she needs both of them. So Ellie and Margaret are not based on any specific people I know, but on the ideas set forth in the story of Mary and Martha.
  A. When I begin to write something new, I have in mind a theme, a situation, and a character (or two), and they dictate the setting. All four of my previous novels have required that part of the story be set in the Lowcountry. What I'm working on now is set in Atlanta, the perfect place for the characters and situations that are beginning to take shape for me.