Love and the Loch Ness Monster
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on April 6th, 2015
A tale of love and the Loch Ness Monster from the author of Water For Elephants, Sara Gruen.
‘Edge’ seeks love, Loch Ness monster
In the haze of a New Year’s hangover, three society swells from Philadelphia take off for Scotland in pursuit of the Loch Ness monster.
Madeleine Hyde, her insufferable husband Ellis and their best pal Hank arrive in Drumnadrochit, Scotland, oblivious to the World War raging around them. Ellis and Hank are making the trek to redeem Ellis with his father, the Colonel, whose reputation crumbled when it was revealed he fabricated photos of the monster.
This entitled trio doesn’t get a warm welcome from the hard-working people of Drumnadrochit. Ellis expects turn-down service and steak, not blackout curtains and beetroot sandwiches. Maddie is a reluctant if resourceful monster hunter, frequently left behind while Ellis and Hank traipse off on booze-soaked outings to the loch.
In this thrilling new novel from the author of Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen again demonstrates her talent for creating spellbinding period pieces. At the Water’s Edge is a gripping and poignant love story about a privileged young woman’s awakening as she experiences the devastation of World War II in a tiny village in the Scottish Highlands.
After disgracing themselves at a high society New Year’s Eve party in Philadelphia in 1944, Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a former army colonel who is already ashamed of his son’s inability to serve in the war. When Ellis and his best friend, Hank, decide that the only way to regain the Colonel’s favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed—by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster—Maddie reluctantly follows them across the Atlantic, leaving her sheltered world behind.
The trio find themselves in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands, where the locals have nothing but contempt for the privileged interlopers. Maddie is left on her own at the isolated inn, where food is rationed, fuel is scarce, and a knock from the postman can bring tragic news. Yet she finds herself falling in love with the stark beauty and subtle magic of the Scottish countryside. Gradually she comes to know the villagers, and the friendships she forms with two young women open her up to a larger world than she knew existed. Maddie begins to see that nothing is as it first appears: the values she holds dear prove unsustainable, and monsters lurk where they are least expected.
As she embraces a fuller sense of who she might be, Maddie becomes aware not only of the dark forces around her, but of life’s beauty and surprising possibilities.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
