The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer

Published in 2002, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer is a rich exploration of the emotional dynamics of a young couple, their families, and their group of childhood friends after a traumatic accident. Packer creates characters for which I feel great empathy as they attempt to deal with a tragic situation. Her book reminds us that impulsive actions can change a person’s life.

Mike Mayer and Carrie Bell have lived in Madison their entire lives. They met at 15 and have been dating through high school and then four years at the university. Both are kind and conscientious. Their relationship has been one of thoughtfulness and tenderness. Now engaged, Carrie deflects and delays each time Mike asks about selecting a date. Not without inner conflict, she says, “I was hating myself because none of it felt right anymore. For so long I had thought of him as necessary ballast that would keep me safe. Now that ballast was holding me down, holding me back. I wanted lightness, freedom.”  She also explains the stifling feeling she carries about their life in Madison, “We might work at banks and libraries and car dealerships but somehow the trappings of adulthood were merely that for us, merely trappings: the truth about us seemed to lie in the fact that we were still closest to the people we’d known since childhood." Feeling constrained by the confines of her hometown, Carrie imagines a wider world filled with stimulation and unpredictability. She has been emotionally distancing herself from the people she loves.

Mike feels Carrie’s love ebbing. On a picnic with their friends, Mike attempts to get Carrie’s attention by making an uncharacteristically spontaneous dive into a familiar lake. The water level is low and tragedy strikes. Mike becomes paralyzed. 

The novel explores how people respond to their responsibilities in a time of crisis and chaos. As Mike deals with his physical paralysis, Carries becomes emotionally paralyzed. Everyone in her life tells her to be strong for Mike. A few months after the accident and burdened by constant hospital visits, Carrie feels the weight of Mike’s accident crushing her and she impulsively leaves Madison for New York. Though young, impetuous, and vulnerable to the vicissitudes of her heart, she needs to get away from the shrinking world of Madison to sort her feelings. Carrie loves Mike and she wants to support him. Yet, should she be disloyal to her own desires and simply marry him?  Except for her mom, few people in her tight circle knew of her diminished feelings toward Mike. They think she simply left Mike in his time of need.

Carrie doesn’t offer the insights of an older, wiser woman. Yet, I admire that she seeks to understand herself and reflect on the choices she made and why she thinks she made them. She struggles to imagine if it would be harder to stay with her quadriplegic fiancé or harder to abandon him when he needs her most. And she berates herself for even thinking about leaving him.  She wonders how, prior to the accident, Mike could have felt so content with the predictability of their planned lives. She reviews her own father’s abandonment of her mother when Carrie was three. 

Carrie has experienced a different kind of trauma. She is only 23 years old. But rather than shrink from pain and conflict, she attempts to search her soul and determine what she should do next. Packer doesn’t offer us a simple happy ending. But like the rest of the book, it is satisfying to watch Carrie wrestle with the complexity of her commitments, her conflicts, and her emerging consciousness.