At the Water's Edge

by Sara Gruen

This book is the story of three rich/spoiled Americans who head to Scotland to try to prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster.

Maddie and her husband Ellis are cut off from his father after a scandalous New Year's Eve party in 1944.  Ellis and his best friend Hank decide the only way to redeem him in his father's eyes is go to Scotland and prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster.  His father had tried to do this year before but was proved a a fraud.

Maddie comes from a very unhappy home.  Her mother was a bit psycho and only doted on her daughter to make her husband jealous and to have someone to confide in and dump her troubles on.  She runs away with a married man but comes back in shame when the man returns to his wife.  She accidentally kills herself, taking pills while having a bath.  She had expected someone to find her before her demise.  Maddie's father had sent her away to a boarding school after a fight with her mother and after seeing the negative impact the woman was having on her daughter.  He doesn't seem to have any affection for Maddie.

Maddie meets Ellis and Hank when she sneaks off to one of the family homes.  She parties wildly with all the local rich kids and doesn't hesitate when Ellis asks her to marry him.

Despite the war the men find a way to get them on a freighter and they make their way to Scotland where they find accommodation in a small hotel  Ellis has registered them in Maddie's family name because he fears a negative reaction to his own family, and he is right, eventually someone sees him and recognizes the resemblance.

As the men cruise the lake, the lakeshore and interview locals Ellis's behaviour to Maddie becomes more rude and dismissive.  She had been diagnosed as having a nervous disposition but it is Ellis who is consuming all her pills.  Maddie overhears a conversation between the two men indicating that Ellis married her as a result of a coin toss.

The people in town resent the two men not being in the war, both apparently have medical excuses, Hank has flat feet and Ellis is supposedly colour blind.  She later realizes that Ellis has faked his colour blindness and threatens to out her.  His behaviour to her becomes even more aggressive and he threatens to have her hosptitalized for her nerves.  She is terrified that he will do this and she telegraphs her father asking her to help her get out of Scotland.  Her father basically responds saying that she has made her bed....

As the men roam about Maddie is bored so she offers to help around the hotel.  She becomes friends with the local women who work at the hotel and in the bar/kitchen.  She is attracted to the mysterious man, a wounded soldier, who is running the hotel.  He had been severely injured in the war but there is a bigger tragedy hanging over him.  While he was at war his wife gave birth to a baby girl who only survived a few hours, shortly after his wife receives word that he is believed killed in the war... she is so distraught a the loss of her daughter and the news about her husband that she drowns herself in the loch.  A tombstone in the cemetery has the date of the babies death, the death of the wife, though she is not buried there, and the month and year of her husband's assumed death, though he did not die.

Maddie finds out her father has died.  She does not tell her husband.  She is trying to get instructions on how to get access to the money and leave her husband, but then her husband receives word that his father-in-law has died.  He is furious that he was not told.  The book ends with the three Americans being at the loch and Maddie's husband tries to drown her.  Angus, the soldier, rescues Maddie. The act has been caught on camera but her husband has destroyed the evidence.  When Hank finds out all that Ellis has done, the drugs, the attempted murder he is furious and they have a fight.  Maddie then learns that her husband has been found dead, having drowned in two inches of water.  The officials deem in accidental and Maddie becomes, Lady of the Estate when she marries Angus and finds true happiness.

This was an engaging story, at first I was totally disgusted with the three spoiled and totally self-centered Americans but gradually came to have some little sympathy for Maddie.  The book kept you guessing til the end, hoping for a happy outcome.