The Saved
A novel by Saloomeh Saz
For four minutes, Agnes does nothing.
On a February evening, a wave takes Ruth Doyle off the sand. Her sister Agnes is standing at the kitchen window. The phone is in her pocket. The rescue buoy hangs six feet from the door.
The Saved is a novel about two sisters, a rescue, and a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.
Out now as an ebook and paperback. The full audiobook is free on my YouTube channel.
About the book
Nobody is a monster at ten. Or at thirteen. Or on any particular evening.
On a February evening in 2010, in the small California coast town of Bowen Landing, a wave takes Ruth Doyle off the sand at the mouth of the river. Her sister Agnes is standing at the kitchen window. The phone is in her pocket. The rescue buoy hangs six feet from the door. For four minutes, Agnes does nothing.
Then she runs into the surf, and the town tells the story it will tell for years: that Agnes tried to save Ruth the way Ruth once saved her, thirty-one years earlier, at the same river mouth, when Agnes was ten.
Only one other person was in the house that evening: Ruth's fourteen-year-old daughter, Clare. It takes her sixteen years to put together what she saw.
The Saved is a novel about a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid, about the stories families and towns tell so they can go on, and about how an ordinary person is made, slowly and by the people who love her, into someone who can stand still while her sister drowns.
Read it here
Start reading now
Open the book right here and read the first pages. If you want to keep going, the Kindle edition is a tap away, and the paperback is on Amazon too.
Also coming to Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and Spotify.
Listen to the whole book here, free
The complete audiobook of The Saved, twelve hours in two parts, narrated by Juliet Foster. Press play and start with Chapter 1, or open it on YouTube to pick a chapter.