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Bridge of Sand
In this beautifully written novel, Burroway uses a woman’s personal loss, coincident with 9/11, to explore race, territory, and renewal.
Dana, the widow of a Pennsylvania senator, buries her husband the morning of 9/11, only miles from the United 93 crash. After months of paralysis, she sells her house and heads south in an effort to pick up the lost strands of her youth.
Finding that her grandmother’s house is now gone, replaced by a strip mall, she phones an old acquaintance. Cassius Huston is black, separated from a harridan of a wife, and devoted to his three-year-old daughter.Much to their surprise, Cassius and Dana fall in love. But when Dana is threatened by Cassius’s family, she flees to the Gulf Coast, where she finally finds herself, and her life, in a place and culture she never could have anticipated.
Set amid the blur of 9/11, this wise, beautifully written novel of love, race, territory, and renewal explores the issues that challenge us all.
Dana, the widow of a Pennsylvania senator, buries her husband the morning of 9/11, only miles from the United 93 crash. After months of paralysis, she sells her house and heads south in an effort to pick up the lost strands of her youth.
Finding that her grandmother’s house is now gone, replaced by a strip mall, she phones an old acquaintance. Cassius Huston is black, separated from a harridan of a wife, and devoted to his three-year-old daughter.Much to their surprise, Cassius and Dana fall in love. But when Dana is threatened by Cassius’s family, she flees to the Gulf Coast, where she finally finds herself, and her life, in a place and culture she never could have anticipated.
Set amid the blur of 9/11, this wise, beautifully written novel of love, race, territory, and renewal explores the issues that challenge us all.
- GenresFiction
328 pages, Hardcover
First published March 25, 2009
85 people want to read
About the author
Janet Burroway
34 books82 followersJanet Burroway is the author of seven novels including The Buzzards, Raw Silk (runner up for the national Book award), Opening Nights, and Cutting Stone; a volume of poetry, Material Goods; a collection of essays, Embalming Mom; and two children's books, The Truck on the Track and The Giant Jam Sandwich. Her most recent plays, Medea With Child, Sweepstakes, Division of Property, and Parts of Speech, have received readings and productions in New York, London, San Francisco, Hollywood, and various regional theatres. Her Writing Fiction is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and a multi-genre textbook, Imaginative Writing, appeared in 2002. A B.A. from Barnard College and M.A. from Cambridge University, England, she was Yale School of Drama RCA-NBC Fellow 1960-61, and is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Florida State University in Tallahassee.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
July 1, 2010
Burroway combines story elements without connection to one another, which is fine. That's an author's work. The book begins with a funeral and 9/11, and a trip back on the road forward. But she folds the devices like travel clothes: maybe it all fit at home, but unpacking at our destination isn't an adventure. When I start wondering why an author chose the route and travel items, I'm not enjoying that journey. Much of the writing is masterful craft. The secondary characters are intriguing; an approaching hurricane is electric, but the featured romance doesn't suit. It feels like too much loose road material shoveled into a pothole, only to spring back out again with the first car passing.
May 6, 2009
I am not enjoying this book. Too many external factors: the political stuff like 9/11, inter-racial relationship, racism,etc. The plot grabs for external events that really don't come from character. Dana hopes to find true love with the black man, a man of physical appeal, and the blacks in this novel come across with equally racist attitudes. For a writer who writes so brilliantly about the process, this novel falls short of the measure.
October 9, 2020
This is what I would call a literary novel, by which I mean that the writing is almost poetic in places and the descriptions are rich and full of meaning. I don't read a lot of literary novels because I write books that are more stripped down where I let the dialogue define the characters more than description, so I tend to read the same type of novels for comparison to my work.
Having said that, I enjoyed this book immensely most of the time. Her dialogue is very good, and the characters and plot, though seemingly very straightforward, are more complex than they seem. A professional review on this Amazon webpage criticizes the author for using the September 11 tragedy for her own "ghoulish" purpose and states it would be a better book without all that detail. I don't know that I agree. The book opens with Dana attending her husband's funeral and she can actually see the curling smoke from the crash of Flight 93 there in Pennsylvania. She draws some interesting correlation between that tragedy and her own personal loss, and I think it works most of the time. Once in a while the references to 9/11 seem shoehorned into the story, but a lot of the time it works in a study of death and loss. It helps build her own sense of grieving, not because she loved her husband so deeply, but because she didn't and only stayed with him because he was dying.
Embedded in this story also is a believable and intriguing examination of her relationship, as a white woman, with a black man, a man who has emotional baggage so different from her own as to make them unable to understand each other at times. The story dragged a little for me when Dana sets up in the Florida panhandle and helps a man out by running his store for him. There is a slow build-up of awareness in what the lay of the landscape was, the history of the people she meets. I won't say I was ever even tempted to stop reading, but I did set it down a few times and read something else for a while. (It seems I am always reading more than one book at once anyway.)
Another distraction is a tour that Dana takes of a recycling plant where her man works. On one level it seems to be in the book because the author did a lot of research on the subject. Dana even runs into the man who gave her the tour later in the book and that meeting seems to mean nothing to the plot. But the tour does lead to her running across her man, and as this is a literary work, I wouldn't be surprised if there are ramifications to the experience that I didn't catch at all. (I am not dense, but for me a novel is mostly about plot and dialogue, what happens and what they say - inner meanings and metaphors aren't high on my list.)
But my beef with the story is minor - this is at its heart a finely crafted and realistic story of a complicated and socially awkward relationship. Living here in the south as I do now, I would recommend it to any chick lit book group out there. The discussions might prove quite interesting and revealing to the participants.
Having said that, I enjoyed this book immensely most of the time. Her dialogue is very good, and the characters and plot, though seemingly very straightforward, are more complex than they seem. A professional review on this Amazon webpage criticizes the author for using the September 11 tragedy for her own "ghoulish" purpose and states it would be a better book without all that detail. I don't know that I agree. The book opens with Dana attending her husband's funeral and she can actually see the curling smoke from the crash of Flight 93 there in Pennsylvania. She draws some interesting correlation between that tragedy and her own personal loss, and I think it works most of the time. Once in a while the references to 9/11 seem shoehorned into the story, but a lot of the time it works in a study of death and loss. It helps build her own sense of grieving, not because she loved her husband so deeply, but because she didn't and only stayed with him because he was dying.
Embedded in this story also is a believable and intriguing examination of her relationship, as a white woman, with a black man, a man who has emotional baggage so different from her own as to make them unable to understand each other at times. The story dragged a little for me when Dana sets up in the Florida panhandle and helps a man out by running his store for him. There is a slow build-up of awareness in what the lay of the landscape was, the history of the people she meets. I won't say I was ever even tempted to stop reading, but I did set it down a few times and read something else for a while. (It seems I am always reading more than one book at once anyway.)
Another distraction is a tour that Dana takes of a recycling plant where her man works. On one level it seems to be in the book because the author did a lot of research on the subject. Dana even runs into the man who gave her the tour later in the book and that meeting seems to mean nothing to the plot. But the tour does lead to her running across her man, and as this is a literary work, I wouldn't be surprised if there are ramifications to the experience that I didn't catch at all. (I am not dense, but for me a novel is mostly about plot and dialogue, what happens and what they say - inner meanings and metaphors aren't high on my list.)
But my beef with the story is minor - this is at its heart a finely crafted and realistic story of a complicated and socially awkward relationship. Living here in the south as I do now, I would recommend it to any chick lit book group out there. The discussions might prove quite interesting and revealing to the participants.
March 25, 2018
In one sentence, this book is about an interracial love affair. I read the book because the author is a local celebrity in my home town, and much of the book is set in that geographical area (northern Gulf coast of Florida). I enjoyed the book and would read another one by Janet Burroway, but I also had some reservations about "Bridge of Sand." The biggest one was that some of the characters felt like painful racial stereotypes. It seemed like the author was trying to show how the main character, Dana, who is white, had stereotypical views of her love interest, Cassius, who is black and how these stereotypical views could be unpacked, unfolded, examined and revised as the two characters got to know each other. That's all good. But Cassius' ex-wife was depicted as simply an Angry Black Woman and nothing more; there was no lesson or meaning here, just a painful stereotype. I also was not quite sure what to make of the ending: racial divides can't be bridged (or can only be connected with an unstable bridge of sand?), we need more time to bridge racial divides, or women will be the ones who build the bridge over the racial divide? I would be curious to know what African-American readers think of the book and its larger message, although the book is clearly aimed at middle-aged white women (like, uh, me). I thought the depiction of north Florida was very well done, although the racial demographics there are rather different from what is presented in the fictionalized setting in the book. Also, a petty point, but no gumbo limbo trees in north Florida.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2024
Woman’s husband dies, but she was planning to leave him anyway. She sells all her stuff and leaves for Georgia - the homestead of her Gramma. Gramma has passed away and the home has been replaced by a strip mall. She meets up with a Black guy she used to work with when she was in high school. They fall in love, but his ex-wife puts up a fuss and threatens to take visiting rights away from him with their daughter if he goes with this white woman. She flees to Florida and moves into a convenience store cabin. The owner dies and leaves her the cabin, the store, etc. The owner was the white lover of the Black man’s aunt--all a secret. Funny parts. I enjoyed the read.
May 18, 2025
At first as I read this, I found the main character to be typical upper class snob type personality, which I found off-putting.
However as the story evolved I became very confused with the decisions she makes?
She seems willing to put herself in danger for an infatuation with someone who barely remembered her from childhood?
What I feel should have been a brief fling at most becomes an obsession that borders on stalking. Waiting for something that was never real, a moment rather than a relationship.
The ending is atleast realistic, which was surprising.
It might not seem like it, but I really enjoyed this book even in its eccentricity.
However as the story evolved I became very confused with the decisions she makes?
She seems willing to put herself in danger for an infatuation with someone who barely remembered her from childhood?
What I feel should have been a brief fling at most becomes an obsession that borders on stalking. Waiting for something that was never real, a moment rather than a relationship.
The ending is atleast realistic, which was surprising.
It might not seem like it, but I really enjoyed this book even in its eccentricity.
March 16, 2020
An engrossing read: entertaining & dealing with difficult real life issues. I found this a bit predictable and a bit over top with respect to all the complications that get shoe-horned into one year! Nonetheless it is convincing enough, well written, and I kept reading!
April 20, 2018
hmmmmm...
March 5, 2020
Romantic racism in the love relationship. Sorry, I just can't get past that, and I don't think anyone should.
August 18, 2020
The voice/format is a bit uneven but that's not necessarily a turn-off. Interesting read. Some unexpected turns.
September 22, 2013
Received in ebook format from the publishers at Hopcyn Press in exchange for a review. Copies are available via Amazon here.
Dana, on the verge of leaving her senator husband of many years, instead stays and nurses him through his final illness. She's burying him in early September 2001, in up-state Pennsylvania, with the plumes of smoke billowing in the distance. Little does she realise that the day she buries her husband is that what grief and sorrow she may feel would be absorbed and unknowingly belittled by the collective national grief coming out of the World Trade Centre bombings.
She comes to terms that her husband has left little money (after debts, death duty etc)
and in her grief fixates on renovating some furniture that she finds in the garage before selling it all.
Feeling little - desiring something - she starts heading west, looking to find the younger self she seems to have lost during her marriage. In looking for the one home she remembers with any fondness - she finds it has been replaced by a mall. She looks up Cassius, one of the few people she remembers from school, and the two soon form a sexual relationship. Almost immediately she becomes aware of an undercurrent she's never had to be attuned to before - being white, she has never had to look through a black man's eyes before, to be wary of where she goes and who with, and certainly not as part of a mixed race couple.
Soon she is threatened by Cassius' family, and escapes to a previously agreed safety spot in Florida. It is here that the majority of the action in the book takes place, where the community is split - black vs white, young vs old, and somehow, without realising it, Dana gets stuck in the middle.
When the book starts out Dana is very numb, and the writing style reflects this - I was worried that it would continue this way through the rest of the book, but it becomes easier as Dana spends more time with Solly, Tanya, Bernedette etc and begins to find herself. The language does remain rather sparse - there's few unnecessary words e.g. we really dont know that much about Phoebe outside of the occasional phone call. Dana's early life - her mother running out on her and her father, Dana planning to leave her husband - makes her a wanderer, desperate to move on, and the finale of the book finds Dana making a decision to commit to what she has and actually stay still for a while - it's not necessarily what she had planned for herself but it's something worth committing to, and not just for herself.
Neither race comes of better or worse than the other - all Whites aren't racist bigots and all Blacks aren't the Nobel Savage. In the end people are people and Dana needs to both find herself and find her position in relation to others whilst coming to terms with all the losses in her life....
So a sparsely worded book that tackles grief, racism, small town living, human against nature, human against human, secrets and lies. The sparseness of the words worked, but am yet to be convinced it's my favourite writing style.
Dana, on the verge of leaving her senator husband of many years, instead stays and nurses him through his final illness. She's burying him in early September 2001, in up-state Pennsylvania, with the plumes of smoke billowing in the distance. Little does she realise that the day she buries her husband is that what grief and sorrow she may feel would be absorbed and unknowingly belittled by the collective national grief coming out of the World Trade Centre bombings.
She comes to terms that her husband has left little money (after debts, death duty etc)
and in her grief fixates on renovating some furniture that she finds in the garage before selling it all.
Feeling little - desiring something - she starts heading west, looking to find the younger self she seems to have lost during her marriage. In looking for the one home she remembers with any fondness - she finds it has been replaced by a mall. She looks up Cassius, one of the few people she remembers from school, and the two soon form a sexual relationship. Almost immediately she becomes aware of an undercurrent she's never had to be attuned to before - being white, she has never had to look through a black man's eyes before, to be wary of where she goes and who with, and certainly not as part of a mixed race couple.
Soon she is threatened by Cassius' family, and escapes to a previously agreed safety spot in Florida. It is here that the majority of the action in the book takes place, where the community is split - black vs white, young vs old, and somehow, without realising it, Dana gets stuck in the middle.
When the book starts out Dana is very numb, and the writing style reflects this - I was worried that it would continue this way through the rest of the book, but it becomes easier as Dana spends more time with Solly, Tanya, Bernedette etc and begins to find herself. The language does remain rather sparse - there's few unnecessary words e.g. we really dont know that much about Phoebe outside of the occasional phone call. Dana's early life - her mother running out on her and her father, Dana planning to leave her husband - makes her a wanderer, desperate to move on, and the finale of the book finds Dana making a decision to commit to what she has and actually stay still for a while - it's not necessarily what she had planned for herself but it's something worth committing to, and not just for herself.
Neither race comes of better or worse than the other - all Whites aren't racist bigots and all Blacks aren't the Nobel Savage. In the end people are people and Dana needs to both find herself and find her position in relation to others whilst coming to terms with all the losses in her life....
So a sparsely worded book that tackles grief, racism, small town living, human against nature, human against human, secrets and lies. The sparseness of the words worked, but am yet to be convinced it's my favourite writing style.
August 24, 2016
This book tells the story of a woman, Dana, who is lost, after burying her husband. She ends up in a southern town and reconnects with a man from her past named Cassius. She also ends up inheriting a store in a small town, which she decides to stay and operate for awhile. The people in this town are African American and Caucasian, interacting, but staying on their own side of town. We meet lots of different characters in this small town, which becomes Dana's home.
Read
September 14, 2009There was much I enjoyed about this book, particularly the setting, and much about the main character and some of the minor characters. I would have liked to understand more about what I saw as a very interesting opening related to having a major tragic world event overshadow events in a character's own life. In some ways this novel felt like a longer version of a short story.
September 30, 2015
Layered, complex, beautifully written story that moves between public and private experiences of marriage, loss, race, family. Burroughs makes the coastal south another character in this compelling story of living up to others' expectations. And one's own"
Read
July 29, 2009Not engaging enough to finish.
August 20, 2009
I am always pleasantly surprised when the writing reads so smoothly that I flip pages with no consciousness of turning pages. Her writing is very smooth at times.
Read
September 3, 2009See my review at: http://womenwritersgettogether.square...
Read
October 6, 2009Okay. Willing to try others.
August 2, 2010
Enjoyed reading; quick read - but not endearing. I didn't fall in love with any of the characters.
February 23, 2011
Burroway's prose envelops the reader, effectively camouflaging the characters' underdeveloped personalities. I was never able to feel compassion for the heroine.
April 3, 2013
Very good writing, but the story wasn't particularly engrossing.
January 17, 2016
Too long. Writing style too descriptive at times. I found I was passing over paragraphs just to get to the end. I also found the romance between Dana and the black guy not very believable.
August 28, 2009
Good end of summer book about love and life-a little far fetched sometimes,but fun to read.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews