In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned ....So begins this luminous story of a young man's passage through the dark turns of adult passion. A contemporary retelling of Turgenev's classic tale "First Love," Salt Water is set against a summer landscape of water, sand, and sky, and relates in seductive detail the momentous events that changed a family forever. On an isolated island off the Atlantic coast, fifteen-year-old Michael and his parents begin their customary lazy vacation. When two exquisite flirts shatter the calm, Michael experiences the provocative mysteries and the consequences of various kinds of love -- romantic and sensual, paternal and filial. William Faulkner Award-winning author Charles Simmons explores the very heart of the human need to be wanted, the intricacies of the father-son bond, and a boy's adolescence in all of its desires, confusion, and heartbreak. The New York Times Book Review A small masterpiece. Simmons has found the perfect, delicate, elegiac voice. The Wall Street Journal A simple and spellbinding novel...grimly enchanting....A powerful, 20th-century tragedy of an American family. Booklist A riveting story of youthful innocence consumed by betrayal. Remarkably enthralling and agonizingly revealing....Simmons...maneuvers unfalteringly between each of his characters....The book's opening line leads like a wick into a powder keg of unexpected consequences. Simply spellbinding. The Wall Street Journal The mastery of the telling...keeps one continually off balance until the maelstrom of a conclusion. Kirkus Reviews A little saga of adolescence...a perfectly-cut gem of its kind. In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned....So begins this luminous story of a young man's passage through the dark turns of adult passion. A contemporary retelling of Turgenev's classic tale "First Love", SALT WATER is set against a summer landscape of water, sand, and sky, and relates in seductive detail the momentous events that changed a family forever. On an isolated island off the Atlantic coast, fifteen-year-old Michael and his parents begin their customary lazy vacation. When two exquisite flirts shatter the calm, Michael experiences the provocative mysteries and the consequences of various kinds of love -- romantic and sensual, paternal and filial. William Faulkner Award-winning author Charles Simmons explores the very heart of the human need to be wanted, the intricacies of the father-son bond, and a boy's adolescence in all of its desires, confusion, and heartbreak. Charles Simmons is the author of four previous novels: the William Faulkner Award-winner Powdered Eggs, An Old-Fashioned Darling, Wrinkles, and The Belles Lettres Papers. Formerly an editor of The New York Times Book Review for more than two decades, he lives in New York City and on eastern Long Island. Chapter One: The Sandbar In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned. For one week in late June a sandbar formed half a mile out in the ocean. We couldn't see it, but we knew it was there because waves were breaking on it. Each day at low tide we expected it to show through. A bar had never formed that far out, and we wondered if it would stick. If it did, the water near shore would be protected and calmer, and we could move our boat, the Angela, in front of the house instead of keeping it in Johns Bay, on the other side of Bone Point. The swimming of course would change, it would be like bay swimming, and the surf casting would be ruined. Father and I used to fish off the shore for king, weak, blues, and bass. The bass gave the best fight and were the best eating. We pulled in a lot of sand sharks too, small, useless things we threw back. Sometimes we went for real sharks, with a big hook, too heavy to cast. We'd fix on a mackerel steak, and I'd swim out with the hook and drop it to the bottom. I did this even when I was small, except then I'd float out on my inner tube, drop the hook, and Father would pull me in with a rope. Mother didn't like this, even though we did it only when the water was calm. Once we got a hundred-pound hammerhead shark, the strangest fish I ever saw. It had a head like a sledgehammer, with eyes on the ends. People said it was a man-eater, but Father said it wasn't. We caught stingrays too. If Father hooked one and I was up in the house, he'd shout and I'd run down with the gaff. Stingrays are broad, flat fish. When you get them near shore, in the shallow water, they can suck onto the bottom and you can't pull them in. You have to go out in high boots and work the gaff through them so that water gets in and breaks the suction. We caught rays five feet across. They have spiky tails that flail around and can give you a whack. Before you can push the gaff through the body you have to step on the tail and cut it off. They eat stingrays in some places, but we didn't. I never went out with the gaff. Father wouldn't let me. He went out