John Casey - Compass Rose

Acclaim for John Caseys

Compass Rose

Splendid. By the end of the book [readers] may well feel as if they themselves had spent several years living in South County. And many such readers, I predict, will be reluctant to leave.

Troy Jollimore, Los Angeles Times

John Casey luminously celebrates a young woman who is indeed the compass for her fractured family and community. Rose is a literary raritythe good and tenderhearted character who is also credible. And Casey has written an affecting story of the way it ismessy, difficult and sometimes radiantly splendid.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch

Mr. Casey describes the extreme claustrophobia and menace of small town living well. His Rhode Island hamlet is filled with gossipthats a givenbut also the overlapping, intertwining relationships that exist in these kinds of insular communities. Casey is so adept at presenting character. It would be great to see them crewing the Pequod, searching for that ever-elusive whale. Even Moby Dick couldnt sink the likes of these women.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The enjoyment of this novel is derived from the unobtrusive skill with which Casey charts the entanglements, convergences, repulsions, and compromises of life in a close-knit community. Casey is marvelously adept at conveying the reflections of an intelligent but not intellectual character such as Elsie. The strongest impression left on the reader, however, is how stubbornly the characters remain themselves even as they are inescapably drawn into each others lives.

The Boston Globe

The genius of novelist John Casey is that he can make the ordinary sublime.

South County Independent

A subtly unusual novel.

The Columbus Dispatch

Casey is superb in plumbing the depths of human feelings and emotions, as he pursues various jealousies, rebuffs, lusts, arguments and encounters. Casey also has a knack for describing the natural world, its smells and briars, back roads and hidden groves. The landscape becomes its own character in this meticulously realized world, conjured up in Caseys quirky, perceptive style. These people seek moments of grace among one another, sudden epiphanies of contentment and connection that vanish almost as quickly as theyre experienced. Life, death, lust, love: the uncertainties of them all dazzle and glisten.

The Providence Journal

There is real greatness to John Caseys writing in Compass Rose, which provides a realistic window into the lives of those who make their living off the Salt Marshes of Rhode Island. There are many lovely, sharp details surrounding the scenery of this estuary, and characters are complicated and fascinatingespecially young Rose.

Bookreporter

This is the kind of novel you dont just readyou dwell inand when you come to the final scenes you hate to see it end.

Hudson Valley News

Casey wades with aplomb through the imposed intimacies of a small setting and the closed feel of a place where families have lived for generations, and it takes years for outsiders to ever really belong.

The Oregonian

John Casey

Compass Rose

John Casey was born in 1939 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the University of Iowa. His novel Spartina won the National Book Award in 1989. He lives with his wife in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is a professor of English literature at the University of Virginia.

www.johndcasey.com

ALSO BY JOHN CASEY

The Half-life of Happiness

Supper at the Black Pearl

Spartina

Testimony and Demeanor

An American Romance

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2011

Copyright 2010 by John Casey

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2010.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Casey, John.
Compass rose : a novel / by John Casey1st North American ed.
p. cm.
1. FishersRhode IslandFiction. 2. Rhode IslandFiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.A79334C66 2010
813.54dc22 201000520

eISBN: 978-0-307-59430-3

www.vintagebooks.com

Cover design by Abby Weintraub
Cover photograph: Emily Brooke Sandor/Getty Images

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M ay sat on the first row of the bleachers, watching the boys warm up. Tom was the second-string catcher, might get in if their team got ahead by a lot. He was good behind the plateall that practice catching for Charlie in the backyardbut he couldnt hit as well as the first-string catcher. At least Charlie and Tom got to play on a team this year. Before Dick got his boat built hed kept them busy during the summer doing chores. No games. And while Eddie Wormsley was fixing the house, theyd helped with that. Now there was some pleasure in their lives. Dick still expected them to work at something that brought in some money, but since he was at sea more than half the time, Charlie set his own schedule. He used the work skiff the same way Dick used tohad his tongs, pots, hand lines. Tom at fourteen was an off-the-books boy at the boatyard, but they didnt keep him half as busy as Dick used to. No question about it, the boys were better off. If you just counted material things, so was she. She took some comfort from the boys.

Across the bright green grass she saw Miss Perry walking with her cane. The woman beside her was holding a parasol over Miss Perrys head. May didnt recognize Elsie Buttrick at first because she was wearing a white dress and looked a little plump. Mays memory of Elsie was of her in a tailored green uniform or in a swimsuit.

Miss Perry and Elsie moved very slowly. Part of Mays mind was piecing together how and why they were here. A more powerful feeling rose through her, making her back and arms rigid. The feeling was nonsense but so strong that she couldnt stop itshe felt that she was the one whod done something wrong. And everyone was about to see it.

Miss Perry stopped to switch her cane to her other side. Elsie switched the parasol from one hand to the other and moved around Miss Perry. Elsie saw May and opened her free handperhaps to show she couldnt help being there. Then she looked down. May was released from her upside-down feeling. She looked to see if Charlie or Tom had noticed Miss Perry. No. She was alone for more of Miss Perrys and Elsies slow progress. She herself was throwing off thoughts faster than she could gather them back in. She was trying to gather them so that she would leave no part of herself outside her. But there was another: a white dress. Had that woman worn that white dress when she was with Dick? Or was it to pretend she was Miss Perrys nurse?