Mermaid Heaven

Betsy Carter's novel, Swim to Me, is lightweight, goofy, a bit melancholy but ultimately uplifting - as one might expect from a novel about a 1960s teenager on a family vacation who falls in love with a second-rate (3rd?) mermaid show in Weeki Wachee Springs, FL. 

Two years later in Delores' depressing Bronx home, her father has walked out, her mother works two jobs, and her baby brother is too young to talk to.  Her letter to the struggling water show's manager results in an audition and a job.

Delores becomes the star of this roadside attraction that is about to be blown out of the water by a new attraction with the name Disney on it.  To boost ratings, a local TV station latches oto the growing popularity of the mermaid show and asks that the mermaids deliver the weather reports.  Delores, the first mermaid to appear, is such a hit that she becomes the permanent weather girl - wearing a fin and sitting on the edge of a clawfoot bathtub, no less!  This is America - isn't this kind of success always possible?

Meanwhile, runaway Dad, who spent years lifting heavy boxes at the grocery store dock, finds that working as a roustabout in a small circus is more fun.  Mom's habit of swiping odd bits of clothing at the publishing house (left from photo shoots) where she cleans results in her becoming friends with a young woman struggling at the bottom rung of Cool magazine.  In fact, this family runs into an assortment of runaways, circus oddballs, aspiring mermaids and mermen, and TV hopefuls - each one struggling to reinvent himself.  And each one sort of finds his niche.  As I said, this novel is lightweight, but sweet.

Nancy Drew, Fallen Girl  

 A young girl in Scotland in 1863 has enough of her drunken mother selling her to men and runs away to reinvent herself as a housemaid in a country house near Edinburgh.  Bessy, as she now calls herself, is bright and worldly and nobody's fool.  She is the bawdy, witty, and often hysterically funny narrator of The Observations by Jane Harris.  She calls them as she sees them, and her vision is sharp indeed.

The missus, beautiful Arabella Reid, is a kindly and almost motherly figure, someone Bessy finds enchanting.  The girl devotes herself to becoming an expert at her new position, but the fact she can read and write seems most important to Arabella.  In fact, Arabella gives Bessy a notebook with instructions to write down everything she does during the day along with her comments on her job.  Bessy, a born novelist, writes what she thinkgs will be acceptable, saving the really colorful thoughts for the version she gives to the reader.  Certain oddities in the household cause Bessy to investigate (OK, to snoop) as she tried to find out why Arabella is obsessed by a former maid who was killed on the train tracks and why Arabella puts her through little tests such as sitting down and standing up until she rebels and refuses.

Along with these two women, there are an assortment of locals who add spice to the village, such as a pompous minister who is always handing out pamphlets with titles such as The Evil Effects of Modern Dancing and a poet who fancies himself the local Burns.  It is often in the descriptions of these fakers and posers that Bessy is at her best.

When Arabella starts hearing noises and seeing things, Bessy, wanting to protect her employer, digs a little deeper into the past, even though she is not so innocent about some of the strange events.  Although she claims to feel guilty, she is not above listening at doors, sneaking into the attic in the middle of the night, and jimmying locked desks.  Eventually events spin out of control, even for someone as shrewd as Bessy, and the resolution is rather clever, even if it is not the one Bessy tried to engineer.