So, in many ways, placing the story in Beaufort was a personal challenge - a challenge to my powers of observation and connection to this unique environment that we’re privileged to call home.Īlthough the main thread of the novel is a woman’s search for her missing dog, the story is ultimately about community, grace, and forgiveness. I am completely enthralled with the Lowcountry, but I’m a Northerner and didn’t really know if I could pull off a story set here. I had decades of experience as a nonfiction writer, but writing fiction is a whole different animal. I was a journalist for much of my professional career. I became sort of obsessed with what I would do if my dog went missing. That night - and for many nights thereafter - I simply could not shake their story. They told me about their dog, who had recently gone missing and their heart-breaking search for him. We really hit it off, so I invited them to my home that night for a glass of wine. I was volunteering at the Pat Conroy Literary Center about five years when a couple came in for a tour. In this case, the “loved one” is a 20-pound rescue dog named Wink. That’s where I first learned about the concept “ambiguous loss,” which experts say is a very different kind of grieving that is unique when a person doesn’t know - and may never know - what happened to their loved one. My last job before I retired and moved to Beaufort was at the Department of Justice, where I did a lot of work on the nation’s missing-persons crisis. Along the way, she meets and befriends a quirky cast of characters who help her grapple with the possibility that she may never know what happened to her dog. The story takes place over a nine-day period, as she searches for her dog. ![]() ![]() On her first day in town, her dog disappears. “Slack Tide” is about a woman who moves to Beaufort to “start over” after the death of her mother, loss of her job, and end of a long-term relationship. “Slack Tide,” a novel by Beaufort resident Nancy Ritter is being released by Charleston-based Evening Post Books on March 15.
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