Set in rural Wisconsin between the First and Second World Wars, this story of two sisters and their children growing up on the shores of a lake is full of secrets, guilt, misunderstandings and tragedy. There's an intensity about the plot that makes it quite difficult to bear at times - especially the ending when so much is at stake.

As a debut novel, it's quite remarkable and I wasn't surprised to hear that it was an Oprah's Book Club choice; but I think it has its weaknesses. In particular, the male characters are pretty shadowy and, despite its undoubted emotional power, I didn't really enjoy it. There wasn't enough light in the story for me. It felt claustrophopbic and I could only read it in little bits. She's undoubtedly a promising writer, but I felt relieved to have reached the end.

Great first novel, ranging in time from the early 1900's to mid-20th century, as we follow Amanda and Ruth, their families and relationships. Really loved this book, very atmospheric, wonderfully-flawed characters making spur-of-the-moment decisions that have wide-ranging and unforeseen consequences - family tragedies, illegitimate babies, unplanned deaths etc.

This is a mesmerizing and twisty story of sisters in Wisconsin in the 1930's. Part historical romance and part thriller, the author paces herself perfectly as she reveals the facts of their lives and loves in this post WWI mystery. Well done, Christina Schwarz!!!

So..living in Madison I thought I would like this at least from the local rural flavor aspect. Unfortunately, I didn't really like anything about it. First, I'm was actually kind of annoyed by the setting. This is supposed to be a lake that is close to Milwaukee but also very rural. Amanda goes to nursing school in Madison, but then the hospital in which she works is in Milwaukee. They go on dates to Chicago, Appleton, Fond du Lac and other faraway places (places that would take 2-3 hours driving EACH WAY in modern times going 70 mph on highways). Pre 1919, it would take them all day just to get to one of these locations. I was just annoyed with the way that Schwarz randomly peppered place names. Similarly, later we are told that the lake is close to both Janesville and Baraboo...not quite and especially not in the 1930s!

Then, for the story, I don't know what other people are thinking here but THERE IS NO SUSPENSE. We find out on page 1 that Ruth went in the water with Mattie; clearly Mandy got Ruth out and not Mattie. Yes, there is some wonder in our minds as to whether Mandy was mad enough to let Mattie drown, but there isn't any real big mystery here.

Later, Imogene tells us that her mom found her in the garden. Clearly, the whole town knows that Imogene is adopted; why then does Mary Louise beg Carl not to tell her? Why exactly on the night that Mattie disappears doesn't everyone wonder how/why Imogene came to appear? Isn't this a small town full of gossip? Why are they so incurious here (other than the obvious reason which is that Schwarz needed them to just ignore this all for the story line)?

Besides all of this, the characters were not always consistent. Amanda is the goody-two-shoes, prim and proper girl with an anger problem UNTIL she meets Clement and then she is a ditzy love crazed teenager. Matilda is a free spirit, but she is afraid to leave home and has crazy mood swings when Carl is away during the day. Oh yeah, and their strong mother is also mentally unstable. Huh? What is that all about?

There is also several problems with Arthur. First, he is six years older (almost seven) than Imogene and at least 4 years older than Ruth. I get that men married women who were much younger than them back in the day (and even now to some extent), but Arthur would not just be heading off to college (architectural school) the same time that Imogene graduates from high school. He also would most likely not be at a the dance at the pavilion, given that he was so much older than the rest of them. Unless they were all that much older an Imogene was the youngest by far (which of course doesn't make sense either). Further, there is NO WAY that Ruth didn't know that Arthur had found her mother in the lake. Carl reads the newspaper clippings all the time and Ruth is curious about her mom, she probably had them memorized. Why wouldn't she recognize his name?

I also found the whole potential incest thing to be unnecessary and crude. I saw it coming a mile away and (certainly it is the only reason Arthur is even required to be interested in the girls) it made me cringe. Amanda also had no reason to kill Clement. That was just overkill and vengefulness and there is no reason for Ruth to not be completely appalled by that.

Finally in the whole "wrap up" chapter in the end where we see that everyone lives happily ever after Imogene wants to stay out on the island. BUT SHE HAS ONLY EVER BEEN THERE TWICE. AND SHE DOESN'T KNOW THE TRUTH OF HER BIRTH. SHE HAS NO CONNECTION TO IT.

I just felt like Schwarz couldn't always keep her characters straight and she tried to write the story backwards to give it some mystery and really just overall it was a crappy read and unnecessary and annoying and had no real redeeming points.

There are lots of mixed reviews on this one, but I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend. ☺️

I think this was the very first book I added to my Goodreads account back when I joined! Drowning Ruth had come out not long before and a coworker of mine was reading it. She seemed really engaged, so I figured it might be worth a read.

Drowning Ruth is a fictional story about two sisters; one of them dies in an accident in the middle of winter on a frozen lake, but there's a lot of silence and mystery surrounding her death. The story line definitely grabs your attention and I would categorize the book as a moderate "page-turner". In general, I don't actively seek out page-turners, but sometimes, it makes the commute to and from work go by faster. This book was just the trick. I wouldn't say it was an amazing story, but the ending was satisfying and it was a quick commute read.

Genre: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Psychological thriller
Rating: 4.5
Review:
This was my first time reading a book by this author so going into it i was gonna rate it 5 stars but as i read it i knocked it down to 3 stars but by the end i decided to knock it up to 4.5 stars.

The plot, setting and Characters were all easy to read and get into BUT the back and forthness of this story made me knock it down to 4.5 stars cause it bugs me when a HF book does that.

I get what the author was trying to do BUT in order for a reader/reviewer to understand the story PLEASE set it in ONE Time era not 2 different ones.

Other than that i really loved the story and i can't wait to read more by this author in the future!!

The excerpts from reviews on the back cover of books are often gushing and raise your expectations too much. Other books are so hyped, that if you read it long after it was published, you may have heard so many friends enthusing about it, that when you finally get to it, you can only be disappointed. Then there are books like this one. I had never heard of this book nor the author, never read any reviews, and had been putting off reading it for a few months, in spite of the rave reviews from respected sources on the back cover, because I didn’t want to be let down. All I can say is, this book exceeded my expectations. It is well-written, the characters are well-rounded and sympathetic, and the story is interesting and believable, spanning the years from just before America joined WWI to the Depression, and set in rural Wisconsin. If you don’t enjoy books which switch between the perspectives of different characters, or backwards and forward in time, you will not enjoy this book. These devices are both used to great effect in ‘Drowning Ruth’ to build up the mystery surrounding the death of Ruth’s mother Mattie, and the involvement of her sister Amanda. It leads you to wonder throughout the book about who was responsible, whether she really drowned, who was the mysterious baby who Ruth claimed to have heard on the night of her mother’s death. Throughout the book, new twists and turns are hinted at and revealed, and a new and dangerous development arises as Ruth grows older and makes friends with the popular Imogene. There are powerful emotions, family loyalties, secrets, crises of conscience and moral dilemmas galore. The only thing which jarred slightly was that Mattie’s widowed husband Carl, despite a major misunderstanding of what really happened, decides that he can reconcile himself with what he believes to be the truth and leaves to work elsewhere. I’m not sure his presence would have made much difference, but it did seem odd. This was only a minor quibble, however. This was one of those books which makes you want to read more by the author. Superb.

Taken from my BookCrossing review, http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7.... Passed on to a BookCrossing friend, Elizardbreath.

Interesting premise, but sometimes difficult to follow as timelines and character dialogue switched within same chapter.

I know authors like to go back and forth in time but this happened on the same page too many times. Just as a bit of continuing story gets going, another part starts. The story had no good/happy parts and didn't seem logical most of the time. Still I have to commend the effort of this authors first work.

Unfortunately the only drowning I was doing was in exhaustion. I never liked any Oprah recommendation,but I give every book an opportunity to impress me. However this book was so boring,it was extremely tedious,inconsistent and forgettable.

NOTHING about the content made a lasting impression.

I need to trust my instincts more.

NEXT!

Drowning Ruth is one of those novels that gets readers so worked up, so lathered, so feverish that they run around pressing the book into the hands of friends and, perhaps, strangers on a plane, insisting with wide eyes and spittle-flecked lips, "Here. Read this."

"Well," the dumbfounded party responds, "what's it about?"

"I cannot tell you."

Exactly. Drowning Ruth is one of those books you want to tell everyone about, but can't. To reveal a little would be to spoil too much. There are so many mysteries, so many surprises in Christine Schwarz' debut novel that nice folks will only give out crumbs of the plot. By "nice folks," I mean those readers who think prematurely reading the last ten pages of an Agatha Christie mystery is punishable by a jail sentence.

In fact, Drowning Ruth might just be this year's literary equivalent to The Sixth Sense.

Which is not to say that Drowning Ruth is a ghost story. It isn't. But yet, there are many characters who are haunted, you see, and--and--

Okay, I'm starting to get lathered up again.

[Deep breath.:]

There. I'm fine now.

From the first sentence to the last word, Schwarz carefully unpeels the mystery of what took place between sisters Amanda and Mathilda and Mathilda's daughter Ruth when they spent an isolated winter on a Wisconsin lake island in 1919. There is a tragedy and there is high drama of the kind familiar to readers of Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and Theodore Dreiser (to punch home the obvious, Schwarz even has one character reading Dreiser's Jennie Gerhardt).

We literally don't know what happened on the island until the very last sentence, and that's what propels us with such page-turning, lip-smacking fury through the book. Schwarz does a masterful job of gradually uncovering details of the three women's lives before 1919 and in the nearly three decades following the tragic events. The story moves between past and present quickly and sharply--like someone flipping back and forth through the pages of a photo album. But even readers who are easily confounded by non-linear narrative can find their way just fine through these pages. Schwarz know when to give us a peek and when to keep the curtain pulled across the mystery.

Drowning Ruth bears the look of a book that belongs in the recent flood of what less-charitable critics call "chick lit." The fact that Ms. Winfrey has stamped her book club "O" on the cover doesn't help matters. But Drowning Ruth lifts its head high above the tide of mass-produced, Kleenex-friendly chick lit. Sure, there's a fair share of turn-of-the-century soap opera shenanigans and, yes, the story is strikingly old-fashioned in scope, but Schwarz's skill with words, characters and pace is so profound and startling that it becomes the sort of literature that sticks in the mind long after the final, shattering page is turned.

I simply cannot tell you enough about this book.

Except: "Here. Read this."