Ponder: The Wish

The Wish ©2021 by Nicholas Sparks follows the author's usual formula of bringing me to tears near the end. The main character, adult Maggie, is a successful, widely traveled photographer with a high caliber art gallery in Manhattan which she shares with a sculptor. How did she get there and how were her interests and skills in photography forged? She is struggling with a life-limiting medical diagnosis. It is Christmas time as the novel opens and adult Maggie begins to reflect on a special Christmas long ago, relating her story to an assistant in the art gallery. 

Flash back to teenage Maggie, who at sixteen finds herself pregnant, the outcome of an immature one-time tryst with a boy she had just met and with whom she would never again cross paths. She is from a Catholic family who are disappointed and embarrassed by her pregnancy. Her parents send her away to live with an aunt she barely knows to gestate and deliver the baby in secrecy and then give it up for adoption. The tiny, sparsely populated, beach/fishing town of Ocracoke, North Carolina, accessible only by periodic ferry trips, is a huge adjustment for Maggie, accustomed to the bustling metropolis of Seattle. Stripped of her family, friends, school, technology, even phone, she begins her stay there very despondent. The aunt is a former nun who used to work with unwed mothers and is at least a patient source of comfort for Maggie eventually as she emerges from her depression. Maggie's parents are absent, unsupportive, and keep their distance thinking they are doing "what is best"; they are dominated by their anxiety for the entire awkward situation to be over. They focus on Maggie's sister, on whom they dote.

Maggie develops a deep friendship with Bryce, an extremely bright young man, slightly older, who is hired to tutor her so her studies will not flounder while she is away from school. He is West Point bound and she must return to Seattle after giving birth so they both know their time together is limited. It is Bryce's mother who trains Maggie in photography, a skill for which she develops a passion that later becomes her life's work. 

The novel oscillates between the present timeline of a Christmas season in Manhattan and remembrances of a few months on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Bryce is raising and training a puppy to be a service dog for the disabled and there is a scene with the dog that brought tears to my eyes. Correction – that incident struck me in a way I started sobbing uncontrollably. That slippery path of my tears greased the way for me to sniff my way through the rest of the book, even though its ending was predictable and as anticipated.

I am a fan of Nicholas Sparks and have read all his books. This one I felt was rather plodding for the first two-thirds; the plot is not key enough in this book to make it a page turner. Nevertheless, I continue to read Sparks' books for his characters and the emotions; the interactions between Maggie and Bryce, between Maggie and her parents,  between Maggie and her aunt, and amongst other characters as well are all worth pondering. I rate The Wish three stars.

★★★☆☆ Better than average; not a waste of time