Undertow by Drake Douglas - Book Review

“Undertow” follows the life of a married couple in the wake of the devastating loss of their daughter (hit by a car). They both decide to move to a small, sleepy hamlet, somewhere on the East Coast, to concentrate on rebuilding their shattered relationship and waning professional abilities.

The house, where they move in, has been sitting abandoned for 200 years – standing creepily on the bluffs overlooking the beach.

They learn about the ruthless pirate, who used to live in the house, and that is when their lives begin to unravel as the secrets of that long-dead pirate become painfully clear, within the house.Ruth slips into gentle insanity, while her husband John is left trapped in the terrifying old Fowles House. 

Though being a horror book, “Undertow” reads more like a drama. Sure, there is a spooky house on the edge of the sea, a little town with its secrets, some suspicious townsfolk and a dead pirate who can’t give up his property.

But the book comes down to a human level, exploring one man’s failings towards his wife and daughter, his failings as an artist, and his general misuse of life. As his wife declines into strange and confounding insanity, John looks more and more towards himself and that is where the real story lies.

Drake writes with a fair amount of details, more than necessary, which is tedious at times but does do the job of bringing his little world to life; and it is a vibrant world.

The author demonstrates his true love of the sea; nevertheless, he could have cut 100 pages of nautical descriptions that make the reader skip pages and skim long articles of nonsense. It was a good book; however, it could have been better.