“Occasionally a book burns into your occipital lobe unable to leave you. How do you stop longing for something you can never have? Dawnland is a poignant reminder that the longings inside of us never go away. Tess Callahan killed me softly with this book. My heart is still in her hands…”
~ Tarryn Fisher, NY Times Bestselling Author of The Wives and Good Half Gone.
“Callahan’s latest book brings two brothers, their wives and children, to their family summer vacation on Cape Cod. The annual family trip is usually the same week of dealing with kids, work and the regular troubles of life. But this year, Oliver and April – the wife of Oliver’s brother, Al – have a secret that they are keeping from the rest of the family. Although the two have a history, it’s their more recent history that they are worried will come out. As the week goes on, it becomes more and more difficult to hide.”
”A deftly crafted and simply riveting read from start to finish, and one that will be especially appreciated by readers with an interest in complex family relationships, “Dawnland” by Tess Callahan is a very special and recommended pick for community/library Contemporary General Fictions.”
The best novels lay a direct, spare framework that offers just enough detail and tension to weave us into the story. We’re transported without knowing how we got there.
In Dawnland, Tess Callahan takes us along on a seaside getaway. In lean prose Callahan builds the background of this perennial family gathering. We become familiar with the primary characters by visiting their perceptual bubbles during relevant experiences from the past, mixed with glimpses of current interactions. Slowly the deep resonance of the present moment accretes as we observe developments from multiple perspectives and time periods. We become familiar with who knows what, who doesn’t, and who has misinterpreted subtle clues to land them at a crucial remove from the truth.
Any getaway has a place. Cape Cod is an active personality in the story—but it could be any coastal vacation spot. Whales to hummingbirds, dunes to forests, features of the landscape play crucial roles to coax what has long-simmered toward a boil. We manage to control so little of what transpires in the individual experience of living. Best efforts and polite discretion only go so far. Eventually we live in the consequences with as much responsibility (or avoidance) as we can muster. There are universal metaphors here that translate across borders and cultures.
The landscape of intimacy, in all its shades, is depicted here with its own unique beauty. Callahan handles such scenes with respect and a deft restraint that allows us to bring them to life from our own imagination and experience. Is there any exchange in human experience more fragile?
It didn’t take long to find myself moving among characters interacting on their own recognizance. As the story plays out I’m in the family, with growing empathy for my relations, my own parallel secrets coming to light. Dawnland offers a solid foundation with just enough subtle guidance that the story will become yours as well.
~ Don Freas, Author of IN BETWEEN, Creativity Set Free, and SWALLOWING THE WORLD, New and Selected Poems
“Tess Callahan works magic in her novel DAWNLAND, writing with mesmerizing lyricism and wisdom about an extended family’s fraught week on Cape Cod. On the eve of their widowed father’s second marriage, two brothers as different as night and day gather with their wives and children for an annual vacation by the ocean that turns out to be anything but mundane. DAWNLAND is a deeply intelligent story about marriage, parenting, adolescence, and the challenge of reckoning with one’s choices. I loved it.”
~ Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party
“Tess Callahan writes with furious urgency about yearning and desire. As family secrets are gradually revealed, the reader begins to glimpse how we are all complicit in the dance. Emotionally powerful, Dawnland explores questions of betrayal, guilt and loss, and the high cost we must pay for genuine freedom. The ending will stay with you long after you turn the final page.”
– Alan Watt, LA Times bestselling author of Diamond Dogs and The 90-Day Novel
Dawnland is a riveting sequel to Tess Callaghan’s 2009 debut novel, April & Oliver. The book authentically explores the relationships between spouses, parents and their children, and the unravelling of family secrets. As in the first book, the writing is eloquent and extremely vivid. “Dawnland” is the Wampanoag name for the land in Cape Cod where much of the story takes place, and this majestic setting has as much of a compelling backstory as the characters in the book. Callahan provides beautiful descriptive language of the landscape, and there are many scenes where the natural elements are seamlessly woven into the story. The book also includes darker subject matter, including infidelity, betrayal, adoption, unresolved childhood trauma, generational trauma, mental health issues, coming-of-age relationships, and family conflicts! There’s so much to digest in this book that reading it at a leisurely pace or at a slower audiobook speed is highly recommended!
The book excels in character development, with more compelling characters than the first book. April and Oliver take centre stage, but the secondary characters and subplots in the story are just as interesting and well developed. The story takes place fifteen years later, matching the publication years between books, yet April and Oliver still have a very complicated relationship. In a twist of fate, April is now married to Oliver‘s brother Al with two children. This is something that may bewilder readers at the start, but as the story progresses, with its many flashback scenes, the evolution of April and Al’s relationship is explicitly laid out and breathes a life of its own. April and Al have a complex dynamic, but there is also a profound love shared between them. Oliver, now married to an older woman with an adopted daughter, has his own troubled relationship with his wife. The couples’ dialogues include a full spectrum of emotions, from angst to heated passion to dramatic outbursts, making for a very captivating read or listen.
The children and young adults in this book have compelling stories of their own, making the book more than just about dysfunctional adults and marital secrets. This is also a story of sibling dynamics, rebellious teenage behaviour, and learning forgiveness that young adults will relate to. Much of the turmoil that the children experience makes some adults in this book very unlikeable at times, including April and Oliver. As the story comes to a close, there is still much uncertainty for the future well-being of the children, perfectly mimicking a real-life scenario.
Narrator Xe Sands does a great job narrating this audiobook. Sands uses a sardonic, matter-of-fact tone to narrate many of the adult characters, accurately portraying many of their stubborn qualities and flawed behaviors. Her narration of the dialogue is very intimate and compelling, easily drawing listeners into the unhealthy and tumultuous conversations between the adults, especially the married partners. Although Sands doesn’t provide a wide range of distinct voices for the characters, she delivers a unique performance and personality for each. With such a solid, engaging performance, the audiobook is definitely a great choice to experience this story. It’s definitely one of those audiobooks that’ll make you stop and re-listen to certain segments to ensure you captured all the captivating dialogue fully!
Overall, this is another riveting, highly authentic, emotional story from Tess Callahan. It’s evident that Callahan’s writing has evolved, along with her ability to intricately layer together so many themes and characters in one book. If you’re looking for a book about family secrets, drama, and dysfunctional characters in an idyllic setting, this book should be high on your list. It’s highly recommended to read the first book, April & Oliver, to appreciate how much the characters grow and change. As real as our own life’s changes through the decades, these books are thought-provoking and leave some valuable lessons in their wake!
“It’s time for the annual summer family get-together on Cape Cod for April, her partner Al, their two kids, Al’s brother Oliver, his wife and daughter, at their father’s house, on the beach called Dawnland. This is a family in crisis, as each of them has secrets and relationship issues. As the week progresses, these secrets come out, and by the end of this week, this family will be torn apart, one member will be close to death… We get to read along in real-time, as this family falls apart. Fans of character-driven, twisty… novels, will love this one. It has something for everyone. A perfect end-of-summer read.”
“An exemplary tale of love and betrayal that spans the years in this sprawling continuation of April and Oliver’s stories. With characters’ layered histories and new family dynamics we are propelled through a weeklong family vacation full of with wisdom, regret, and the gradual untangling of time lost. The diction, the prose, the character dynamics… you’ll hear me talking about this one for a long while to come.”
– Hannah, Bookwormstalk
“Do not hesitate; in the moment between emotion and decision/action, an entire world may be lost. That loss is one of the themes of this shattering book, so…do not hesitate.
Find yourself a copy and let yourself drown in the churning net of Callahan’s characters, their relationships, and the rich, tidal landscape she conjures. You will not want to come up for air.
I was pinned to my chair by this book for hours—I ignored my teenage sons and my husband and my dog (they are fine). Dawnland sandblasted its way past the sounds of men rebuilding the roof of my home—even that one guy who kept tapping out “shave-and-a-haircut…”, then left my family hanging without the last two beats, the men in my life looking up at the ceiling in bewilderment. I did not care about the last two beats. It is a difficult job, being a roofer. If he needs to leave us hanging, so be it. He may not even be thinking of us at all. People are going to do what they need to do—and that’s another one of Callahan’s themes.
It may be of interest to know several things about me: I read widely and indiscriminately, but shun books that feature “romance” in favor of horror; I have been privileged enough to spend three weeks every summer for the past decade in Cape Cod (the titular “Dawnland”); I adore Anna Karenina; Hozier and Annie Lennox singing “I Put a Spell on You” is one of the best performances ever (fight me!), and my favorite animal is the Great White Shark. If you see contradictions in that list, welcome to my brain—that thing that got keelhauled by this book. All of these facts or loves are in harmony with this story. I feel as if I now own an entire bespoke wardrobe—and you will too, even if your list looks different from mine (Good Lord, I hope it does, for your sake!).
Dawnland is about love of all kinds—romantic, doomed, familial, fatalistic, erotic. It is about damaged people standing on cliffs both literal and metaphorical, and how music can slip a wedding ring off as quick as you please—with only a little pain at the knuckle.
Somehow, this book made cynical ol’ me dog-ear pages with lines like “still young, she had somehow believed love was a thing that happened to you like rain.” I loved that line because I feel as if the character who thought it, the multilayered April, was a real person. I was happily hijacked by musical Oliver, who, like me, thinks “the threshold spaces are where the juice comes through. Terror is the price of admission.” One ticket, please.
The book reveals the secrets of one family with great patience and inexorable weight; I particularly enjoyed the red herring (yes, I mean the pun) of the coffee-table book entitled “Secrets of the Sea,” which is turned by an unknown hand to showcase different creatures as the family vacation moves forward, day by fatal day.
Callahan does not hide in motifs, however. She comes out swinging for the bleachers by addressing alcoholism…
“Here’s the thing: Drinking is like a box of bonbons. If the first one doesn’t satisfy you, the second one never will…it was pointless to bring up booze. An animal trapped in barbwire will snap if you try to help it. Yet ___ believes himself free. He drinks to prove it.”
…or the terrible beauty of chosen isolation (btw, if you are a W.B. Yeats or Rumi or Robert Pinsky fan, you will love this book: Callahan is clearly a poetry hound)…
“Far below, the wind shears off the tops of combers, hurling spray in billowy manes. No one will come for her. She is alone. This is what it feels like to have no name, no age, no gender, no history.”
…the pain of not sharing one’s art with others…
“Our minds do all kinds of things to keep us feeling small and numb, because if we had any idea how big we really are, it might blow our circuits.”
…and the debt all of us owe to the original inhabitants of the land upon which we cast our little shadows…
“(Dawnland) is the Wampanoag name. This is their land, after all. They’re the People of the First Light…They helped the settlers survive their first bleak winter on the Cape, and then, in only three years, ninety percent of the Wampanoag died from diseases they had no immunity to. They called it the Great Dying. Bones everywhere. Nine out of ten people. Picture that. Of all of us here this week, only one would survive. And who would want to be that person?”
What follows that piece of dialogue is a story of incredible pathos. I will not detail it here, but it might be my favorite scene. Callahan honors the First Nations at the beginning, in this scene close to the middle, and at the end of the novel.
Close to the end, April asks a question I have struggled with my entire life: “Why is it so hard to live without hurting people?”
If you have read this far, thank you for helping me process this book. Since Covid, I have not been able to read as quickly as I once did—until the Dark family came into my life.”
~ Elizabeth Barbato, author of Elpenor Falls