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nancyadair 's review for:

Carry Me Across the Water by Ethan Canin
4.0

had time to read a book on my real, not virtual, book shelf and picked up Ethan Canin's Carry me Across the Water, a 2001 book from Random House.

August Kleinman has based his life on his mother's advise to "take no one's advice." Together August and his mother escaped Nazi Germany, leaving behind his in-denial father, and forged a new life in Brooklyn. August falls in love, serves in the Pacific theater during WWII, and takes the risk to start his own brewery and makes millions. Now in old age August takes stock of his choices, plans to give away the burden of wealth, and hopes to amend for his action the war, involving a return to Japan.

Memory, violence, father and son relations, expiation, art, and faith are all touched on in this slender volume about one man's life that illuminates the human experience.