{"id":4470,"date":"2022-06-15T07:57:15","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T14:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4470"},"modified":"2022-06-15T07:57:15","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T14:57:15","slug":"sarah-stewart-taylor-the-drowning-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sarah-stewart-taylor-the-drowning-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Stewart Taylor: The Drowning Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The third novel in Sarah Stewart Taylor\u2019s Maggie D\u2019Arcy series finds Maggie at a crossroads.\u00a0 Formerly a Long Island cop, she\u2019s now unemployed, and in Ireland with her daughter, on holiday with her boyfriend, Connor and his son. The first novel was Maggie\u2019s journey backwards: she looked for the killer of her cousin, who had disappeared in Ireland twenty years before.\u00a0 The second novel finds her investigating a crime that begins on a Long Island beach but has roots in Ireland.\u00a0 This third novel finds her firmly in Ireland, planning to move there, and deciding what she should do as far as a new career.\u00a0 As the book makes obvious, she very much misses police work and hates being on the outside looking in (this is a clue to her eventual decision, but it\u2019s hardly a spoiler).<\/p>\n

More than anything else, these novels are a love letter to Ireland.\u00a0 While the first two had more of a city focus, this one is out in the country, by the water, where Maggie finds a great deal of solace in running and in early morning swims in the very cold sea.\u00a0 The atmosphere, the detail of the landscape \u2013 Stewart Taylor takes her reader there.\u00a0 This book also boasts a nice, haunted, gothic, creepy mansion at the center of it all.<\/p>\n

The little village where Maggie and Connor are spending their holiday is centered around this old mansion, the \u201cBig House\u201d of past days, where many of the villagers worked and where one of them, Lissa, lived as a girl.\u00a0 She has sold the family home to developers and lives in a cottage where she paints and where she has a bird\u2019s eye view of her former family home.<\/p>\n

Added into this mix is a scattering of Polish workers, in town to work the construction jobs springing up as the old house is developed into a hotel and as fancier cottages are being built.\u00a0 The natives are split on whether development is good or bad \u2013 I kept flashing back to the 80\u2019s film, Local Hero<\/em><\/a>, where one of the characters, talking about proposed development in a tiny, picturesque Scottish town, says \u201cYou can\u2019t eat<\/em> scenery.\u201d\u00a0 Obviously, there\u2019s a case for each side.<\/p>\n

Then there is the unexplained body that washes up on the beach, the body of a young Polish man who has disappeared several months in the past.\u00a0 Maggie is drawn to the mystery not only because that was her job, but because the dead man is connected to the young man her teenage daughter is now dating.\u00a0 She\u2019s interested in the connections.<\/p>\n

This novel is very much about connections as Maggie is appreciating her connection with Connor; figuring out her changing connection to her teenager, Lilly; the connections she might be able to form in her possible new Irish home, and whether they will be as resonant as the long-established ones she had home in Long Island.\u00a0 She\u2019s homesick, but she\u2019s also looking forward.\u00a0 The book makes a case for community, for family connection, and ultimately, for connection to nature.\u00a0 The gentle mystery is an integral part of this beautifully written story, but it\u2019s only a part. True to form, Stewart Taylor wraps things up with a bang.\u00a0 I felt like I\u2019d been to Ireland after I closed the book, and I very much enjoyed the journey.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking forward to seeing how Maggie\u2019s next life decisions play out.<\/p>\n

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The third novel in Sarah Stewart Taylor\u2019s Maggie D\u2019Arcy series finds Maggie at a crossroads.\u00a0 Formerly a Long Island cop, she\u2019s now unemployed, and in Ireland with her daughter, on holiday with her boyfriend, Connor and his son. The first novel was Maggie\u2019s journey backwards: she looked for the killer of her cousin, who had … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[851,11,355,357,100,850,356,452],"class_list":["post-4470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-crossroads","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-maggie-darcy","tag-minotaur-books","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-sarah-stewart-taylor","tag-traditional-detective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4474,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470\/revisions\/4474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}