Early in Linda Sienkiewicz’s Love and Other Incurable Ailments, the narrator Serenity Tomczyk, confesses, “My heart ached over a stranger named Birdy,” establishing the motive for the decisions she will make and the actions that lie ahead. Who is Birdy? Can she find him? Then what?
Serenity, a character who is anything but serene, is a loveable bundle of neuroses. She worries about her health (each chapter begins with a weather report and a review of her physical complaints, estimating her “chances of survival”). Recovering from a breakup with an abusive fiancé and the loss of her mother, she attends group counseling, where, she notes, “We were overthinkers trying not to overthink our overthinking.”
In a plot device that calls to mind the Victorian novel, she learns of this man’s identity, this Birdy whom she also discovers to be a spurned lover. In an act of uncharacteristic courage, Serenity sets out to find him, meet him, and live out her romantic fantasies. She quits her job flower arranging in Michigan and moves to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where Birdy is, where she hopes her future is.
This move is totally the reader’s good luck. If setting can be said to be also a character in a novel, that assertion is borne out in this novel. The physical environment is richly evoked:
White dunes, sea oats, pale sea grass and scrub trees grew along one side of the two-lane blacktop, and beyond that stretched the ocean. Pamlico Sound shimmered brightly on the other side. A layer of sand swept across the road in places. Online photos of this thirteen-mile, narrow roadway showed how hurricanes often washed the road out. I marveled at people who built their homes on a constantly shifting landscape. How did they know when to run, when to stay?
On the island Serenity meets an array of colorful local characters: Raf, Quade, Nuby, Manny and Carmen, Emma and Zion, Jake. And Birdy. When the romantic weather gets rough, Serenity has to decide whether to run or to stay.
Sienkewicz has a fine touch for phrasing. Surprises pop up throughout the novel. The Michigan spring is “mucky, earthy and plump with promise.” When a customer in the flower shop speaks, we hear “her voice a gravely affectation, like a field of stones being hoed.”
Then there’s the Ocracoke lingo sprinkled into the narrative. A local tells her, “Yes, ma’am. I’m a ‘creeker, or O’cocker.” Coming from the North, Serenity is referred to as a “woodser.” The tourists are “dingbatters.” A frustrated local snaps, “You can kiss my go-to-hell!” Serenity needs to “cool her quirk,” finding the island to be “quietsome.”
All this adds up to an engaging read, an escape to an exotic place that’s definitely not Florida, a story with twists and turns that kept me reading.
This book is available from Regal House Publishing, Amazon, Bookshop.org and Barnes and Noble. For more information, see https://lindaksienkiewicz.com/
*I received a free advance reader copy of this book from the author.