CASCADE reminded me very much of A NORTHERN LIGHT by Jennifer Donnelly (that's a good thing). Though the latter is a coming-of-age novel and the main character is sixteen, she faces at least one of the same choices as twenty-six-year-old Desdemona in CASCADE: leave her small town to pursue a career as an artist, or stay to take care of her family?

On top of that major dilemma, Dez is facing a few other issues: re-opening her father's famous Shakspeare playhouse; her attraction to another artist, Jacob; her reluctance to have children, though her husband wants to start a family; and the imminent drowning of the town of Cascade, to make way for a reservoir for the city of Boston.

Dez's problems are understandable in any time or place, which makes it easy to empathize with her. In an interview, O'Hara cites a line from poet Seamus Heaney: “He wrote, ‘You lose more of yourself than you redeem doing the decent thing.’ That stopped me in my tracks. Who really benefits in the end if you sacrifice all for others?”

This is the question Dez faces as Cascade's future becomes bleaker, World War II looms in the background, and the WPA gives American artists a lift. Yet even as Dez makes important decisions, the ground shifts beneath her, and those decisions have unexpected outcomes.

Quotes:

It was the kind of day that would turn to night without fanfare, with a gradual extinguishing of light, the kind of day that pierced you with melancholy and reminded you it was only December, that a whole winter had still to be gotten through. (3)

Dismay is a small, quiet emotion. We say we are filled with dismay, when actually dismay causes us to pause and quietly check our consciences. (12)

Then...what she always hoped for with oils, but could never count on, happened: the convergence of effort and inspiration into something that actually looked the way she intended it to look. (77)

Sometimes an image was enough. It was all about curiosity, in a way. Could you make this happen? Could you do with your hands and a brush what your mind's eye had already painted? (84)

"[W]e're all born the same and the only divisions between us are ones we make ourselves." (95)

Maybe every person's first reaction to a problem was instinctively selfish....Maybe overcoming that instinct was what differentiated the truly good from everyone else. (105)

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. (134)

"We people take up space, and then when we're gone, there's just the space left, and sometimes you can't quite comprehend how that can happen." (168)

So many contingencies marked our destinies. (191)

"Sometimes things are as they must be, not as they ought to be....I'm so sorry, but life is full of tough choices between less-than-perfect alternatives." (272)

...it made her heartsick a moment, and then glad she had left, glad she had the opportunity to feel heartsick rather than bored and trapped. (280)

When she left Cascade in July, Cascade seemed to become a place that existed somewhere lost in time. It was strangely disorienting to be heading back. (293)

...the mere fact of mystery uncovered always brought with it a sense of disappointment, of deflation. (319-320)

And that was the thing about art, about any artistic endeavor where you gathered all the energy and emotion that surrounded you and tried to paint it, write it, sing it. It was never quite enough. There was always the impulse to try for better, for purer. (325)