Rescue By Anita Shreve

Moshe Bloorian
English 12-53 [2167] 2nd Draft
Professor Chadwick Question # 1 27 May, 2014

Moshe Bloorian 1

Though the world often makes a hue and cry over the plight of single mothers and how tough life can be for them, people hardly discuss or care about single fathers, whose lives also become equally tough when they are left with a child. Ask any woman, and she will be the first to tell you how difficult it is to find a man who is responsible, caring and willing to do just about anything for the well-being of a family. Anyone would immediately jump at the opportunity, because frankly, these opportunities don’t come up that often. Anita Shreve’s novel Rescue, is about the difficulties one single father faces raising his daughter, and the struggles of maybe jumping into a marriage that was never supposed to be. Yet throughout his marriage he persevered and tried his best to be a good husband.
Peter Webster’s story begins, significantly enough, when he meets Sheila who had totaled her car, fleeing from a man who was her boyfriend. Webster pulled Sheila alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that began a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma-streetwise and tough-talking girl, with haunted eyes, a fierce desire and a never look back determination. Webster, as straight as an arrow, fell for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Webster were embroiled in an intense love affair. Then marriage and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that