Reviews

“Khoury debuts with a mesmerizing account of a restless man from Cape Cod who starts a new life on the Outer Banks at Cape Hatteras with a new family….This should do the trick as elevated beach reading.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

 

 “In an afterword, Khoury writes of stories she first heard as a child, rumors about a ‘man with two families,’ north and south….Fittingly, Gil Lodge remains as elusive on the page as Gilly and Blythe are vividly present. For them, he’s inevitably defined by the natural world he loved. ‘Gil was wed not to us,’ Blythe explains, ‘but to a place, and to that place he was the most faithful of men.”

Alida Becker, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

 

 “The three main characters, Gilly, Blythe, and Gil Lodge, are drawn so strongly that we feel the emotional forces that drive their actions, impelling them as if preordained. Gil’s deeply instinctive knowledge of the creatures of the sea and birds connects the reader to the wildlife of both Cape Cod and the Outer Banks. But it is the vivid and engrossing descriptions of the sea in all its moods and ferocity that intensify the emotional impact of the novel, making it as close to great as any I have read. On first reading, this story might seem poetic, unworldly, supernatural. The afterword is a revelation.”

Valerie Adolph, HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY

 

 “Khoury based her debut novel on a true story recorded in historical newspaper accounts. Readers will enjoy her slow-paced emotional historical fiction about the pain inflicted by the Civil War on soldiers and their families.”

Jennifer Mills, LIBRARY JOURNAL

 

 “Khoury’s atmospheric depiction of her characters’ interwoven lives is beautifully rendered.”

Karen Clements, BOOKLIST

 

 “Flowing between the late 1800s and the 1940s, the book’s non-linear timeline and dual settings allow the reader to piece together, through Blythe’s perspective, why Gil Lodge left Cape Cod. As intriguing as this story is, it overlays something just as compelling: Khoury’s singularly poetic prose, which lends a dreamlike quality and enveloping lyrical rhythm, combined with her spectacular attention to detail and gift for description and metaphor. She depicts the Outer Banks and Cape Cod as only a deeply observant insider can, viscerally immersing readers in the feeling of life in, on, and around the sea.”

Molly Harrison, OUR STATE Magazine: Celebrating North Carolina

 

“Loosely based on a true story, Angel Khoury’s historical novel BETWEEN TIDES tells the story of a mysterious New Englander who ‘disappeared between tides’ in 1893; a man who slowly uprooted his entire life, leaving his wife on the Cape, only to recreate that life with a younger woman on the Outer Banks.”

Christina Galt, CAPE COD LIFE

 

 “I cannot recall when I have been so touched by a book–not only the narrative, which is fine and well told, but the beauty of the words chosen and laid together.”

Julianne B. McCullagh, AUTHORLINK, WRITERS & READERS MAGAZINE

 

 “BETWEEN TIDES is a love story in two parts: the other and the self. It is doomed, heart-wrenching, enchanting, and acts as both a gift and a curse–but it is a love story all the same.”

Jordan Zachary, SOUTHERN REVIEW OF BOOKS

 

 “Angel Khoury is a deeply gifted writer. Between Tides bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a haunting maritime opera of torn lives, betrayal, love and near-redemption. Especially the women characters have hearts that are like wild seascapes.”

Howard Norman

Twice a finalist for the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and bestselling author of THE BIRD ARTIST and NEXT LIFE MIGHT BE KINDER

As I read Between Tides, I was continually impressed by the novel’s sheer richness. Only immense research could capture a place and its history so thoroughly, yet Khoury blends fact and imagination so well that the reader is always within the novel’s world.  The writing is vivid and memorable, a delight unto itself, and the characters complex, utterly convincing.  From a coastal landscape known for hidden treasures, Angel Khoury has emerged and given us a wonderful novel.

Ron Rash

NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of SERENA and THE COVE

“Set on two wild seascapes, Cape Cod and North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Between Tides is a literary page-turner about “the man with two families,” the wives he betrayed, and the child he left behind. The tale is told by the aging recluse Blythe Lodge, the eccentric first wife still living in her ramshackle old house on Cape Cod. Novelist Angel Khoury has invented an incandescent language and a fluid point of view all her own to write this century-spanning story of passion and betrayal, memory and consciousness, love and longing, all set in an isolated, beautifully-limned natural universe of sun and sand and tides, birds and fish and seagrass. I have never read anything quite like it, though I am reminded of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, of Virginia Woolf, of the film Grey Gardens, and especially of Lily King’s novel Euphoria in which intellectual and physical passion intertwine. Brilliant, ambitious, and enthralling, Between Tides is a totally original work of art.”

Lee Smith

NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of ORAL HISTORY and THE LAST GIRLS

“I couldn’t stop underlining my favorite passages….Gorgeous! Every line is gorgeous. I savored the words.”

Michele Young-Stone

Author of LOST IN THE BEEHIVE, an O MAGAZINE Pick

“What a beautiful, entrancing novel Angel Khoury has written, full of history, nature, and human nature….This is that other kind of beach read–not for casual consumption while stretched out on the warm sand, but to read and contemplate while you’re inside on a chilly day, remembering the beauties of the coast and the pull of the tides.”

Linda C. Brinson, GREENSBORO NEWS & RECORD & WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL

“North Carolina writer Angel Khoury took a story she heard more than 20 years ago from a woman in her 80s whose father had disappeared, and their many conversations afterwards, and turned those into the loose basis for her first novel. The historical novel about loss and absence is set in the 1890s, when a man deserts his post as keeper of the Chatham Beach Life-Saving Station to start a new family at Cape Hatteras. More than five decades later, his North Carolina daughter travels to meet the first wife on Cape Cod.”

Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll, CAPE COD TIMES, Hyannis, MA

“BETWEEN TIDES captures the story of a restless man seeking a change from his life on Cape Cod. Told from the first-person omniscient point of view of his first wife, the novel intertwines the essence of Cape Cod with the historically rich aura of Cape Hatteras while breathing life into characters inspired by a real family.”

Danielle Puleo, THE COASTLAND TIMES, Manteo, NC

“Angel Khoury, a 40-year resident of the Outer Banks, gives us a haunting and lovely tale borrowed from history. Shifting between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras, the story spans decades and generations to explore the settings, two lengths of rough coastline, that shaped the characters and determined the course of their lives. With lyrical prose and deft interweaving of parallel lives, Khoury has created a mesmerizing account of loneliness, love, family entanglement, and how the geography of Hatteras Island itself is a character.”

Sue Sawin, OUTER BANKS COASTAL LIFE Magazine, Nags Head, NC

“Many writers have attempted to translate the subtle allure and indelible stories of our coast into text; few have actually captured the haunting majesty and gritty realities of this place. Angel Khoury has delivered a fictional narrative that is timeless and universally beautiful.”

Creecy Richardson

Sam & Winston, Manteo, NC

Between Tides ebbs and flows between the beaches of Cape Cod and the beaches of Hatteras Island. It flows in time as well, between the late 1800’s and the 1940’s, so for dual time and historical fiction fans out there, this is THE next big read. … Khoury has truly captured coastal life in the late 19th century and does it so well it is startling sometimes to look up from the page and discover oneself back in our own modern age. A book to read from start to finish in one sitting, a book sure to please lovers of the written word, a debut that is going to make waves throughout the literary world.”

Jamie Anderson

Duck's Cottage Coffee & Books, Duck, NC and Downtown Books, Manteo, NC

Between Tides is a beautifully written historical novel set on Cape Cod and the Outer Banks of North Carolina between the 1890s and the l940s. It begs to be read aloud and the reader will probably find themselves doing just that.”

Elizabeth Merritt

Titcomb's Bookshop, East Sandwich, MA

“I have, sadly, turned the last page. I slowed down and tried to make it last. I so loved living in that world. On page 263, the paragraph that starts ‘When the wind was right…” I don’t know that I’ve ever seen in words that moment out of time that is the very essence of euphoria. For anyone who has never experienced it, that description would be simply a lovely interlude. But for those of us who have had that feeling of ‘becoming one with’ not only another person but also this singular Outer Banks place…well I just love it. And I love that Khoury must have had enough of those moments to embed the feeling in her heart.”

Gee Gee Rosell

Buxton Village Books, Hatteras Island, NC

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