Where the River Ends - ISBNLookup.com

Publishers Weekly

In this sentimental story about a terminal cancer patient's demise, Martin (When Crickets Cry) examines the lengths to which a loving husband will go for his dying wife. Doss Michaels, a portrait painter with a "trailer trash" background, marries Charleston, S.C., debutante Abbie Eliot Coleman, raised primarily by her demanding U.S. senator father after her mother died of ovarian cancer when Abbie was two. A decade after Abbie and Doss's marriage, her father and stepmother will still have little to do with Doss. Abbie develops breast cancer that later metastasizes to her brain, and tensions rise when Abbie's parents want her to spend her last days with them. But Doss and Abbie, armed with Abbie's top 10 wish list and fistfuls of medication, begin a 129-mile river journey from the small town of Moniac, Ga., on the St. Mary River out to the ocean. Martin brings to life the varying flora and fauna of this often fraught journey, while he captures the singular atmosphere of life on a changeable river as it traverses through varying Georgian and Floridian terrain. In the tradition of Nicholas Sparks and Robert James Waller, Martin has fashioned a heartbreaking story. (July)

Library Journal

A Southern writer who has been compared to Nicholas Sparks, Martin wrote his sixth novel after hearing of a man divorcing a wife dying of breast cancer. Doss Michaels, a fishing guide and part-time artist in Charleston, SC, is willing to face possible kidnapping and other serious charges generated by his disapproving father-in-law to fulfill his wife Abbie's last wishes for one more adventure together-a 130-mile trip down St. Mary's River. Filled with stereotypes (Abbie is the beautiful daughter of a Charleston senator who considers Doss trailer trash) and stretching credulity at times (a woman dying of cancer surviving even a day in a canoe), this story might win over readers nonetheless with its theme of husbandly devotion. The many nice ideas and images throughout, such as the use of the river journey as a metaphor for life, and Abbie and Doss's loving 14-year marriage chronicled in alternate chapters also compensate. Yet the abundance of nature/wildlife detail may detract from the story for some readers. But Abbie's top-ten wishes for her last year will make readers consider their own. Purchase where Martin is popular.
—Rebecca Kelm

Kirkus Reviews

Defying her powerful father, a husband honors his dying wife's wish for a wilderness canoe trip, in Christian-fiction author Martin's secular debut (When Crickets Cry, 2006, etc.). Doss Michaels, raised poor in a Georgia trailer park, is a starving art student working and living in a cold-water studio in Charleston, S.C. When he rescues supermodel Abbie, daughter of upper-crust Charlestonian Senator Coleman, from a boardwalk thug, she visits Doss's studio and makes him her personal gentrification project. Abbie and Doss, both 21, marry in a civil ceremony, alienating her father and stepmother. Abbie becomes a successful interior designer, eclipsing her father's fame, at least among Charleston's elite. Doss's decor-friendly paintings also take off. Abbie leads Doss on a grand world tour of museums where he's exposed to Renaissance work he'd only seen in art books. After ten years of marriage, while visiting New York City, the couple is horrified when a lump in Abbie's breast is discovered. Four years of "slash, poison and burn" cancer therapy leave Abbie a mutilated, desiccated remnant of her former self, but with her indomitable spirit intact. Sentenced to hospice, she urges Doss to take her down the St. Mary's River, where Doss once worked as a guide. Equipped with two canoes, one for supplies including a stolen cache of sophisticated opiates, they embark on Abbie's final to-do list: ride a merry-go-round, sip umbrella drinks on a beach, etc. They narrowly escape ambush by four psychopathic rednecks right out of Deliverance. Further downriver, after Doss and Abbie encounter a friendlier group of classic-rock-loving, beer-swilling biker types, the bad rednecks return to a desertedboathouse where the duo has sought shelter. In a sensationally off-putting scene, the thugs discuss whether to rape Abbie, and Doss, this time, can't intervene. Considerable longueurs result from much nature gazing on the river, and the least stereotypical character, Bob, a crop-dusting defrocked priest, appears too briefly. A gruesome ordeal unredeemed by wit or much drama. First Printing of 150,000