Introduction

“I loved The Forever Bridge from its first beautiful sentence to its breathtaking final one.” —Ann Hood With eloquent prose and lush imagery, T. Greenwood creates a heartfelt story of reconciliation and forgiveness, and of the deep, often unexpected connections that can bring you home.

Sylvie can hardly bear to remember how normal her family was two years ago. All of that changed on the night an oncoming vehicle forced their car over the edge of a covered bridge into the river. With horrible swiftness, Sylvie’s young son was gone, her husband lost his legs, and she was left with shattering blame and grief.

Eleven-year-old Ruby misses her little brother, too. But she also misses the mother who has become a recluse in their old home while Ruby and her dad try to piece themselves back together. Amid all the uncertainty in her life, Ruby becomes obsessed with bridges, drawing inspiration from the strength and purpose that underlies their grace. During one momentous week, as Hurricane Irene bears down on their small Vermont town and a pregnant teenager with a devastating secret gradually draws Sylvie back into the world, Ruby and her mother will have a chance to span the gap between them again.

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Excerpt

Here is the night the world changes, your world changes. The night when certainties are shattered, and you are left with shards of your old truth, hunched over and picking up the broken pieces, wondering that they ever made anything whole. And the pieces are sharp, and the pieces will hurt you again and again and again.

Here is a bridge. Here is a river. Here is rain and a family and a car: a brown sedan that has seen better days. The leather seats that were a luxury to the original owner are now cracked, tears duct-taped and cold. It is late autumn in Vermont. It is too dark to see this, but you know that the corridor of trees that make a tunnel as you travel down the bumpy dirt road have turned from green to blazing crimson and yellow. That this is the beautiful burst of flames that occurs before everything dies.

Here, inside the car, the mother, Sylvie, does her lipstick in the greasy mirror in the passenger-side visor. Here is the father, Robert, fiddling with the dial on the radio, attempting to get the game to come in and stay in. The first Celtics game of the season is on and Boston is down by seven against the Cavs after the first quarter. Here are two kids in the backseat. Ruby is nine and Jess is seven. They both have thick mops of brown hair. They both have a pair of startlingly green eyes. They are beautiful children. This is what Sylvie thinks. Robert is more concerned with the boy’s ability to throw balls, with their heights, which he records on the Sheetrock in the unfinished room he is building for Ruby now that she is getting older. They can’t afford the addition, but

he also knows that part of his job is to not ask questions. It is to build this room and not complain. His job is to mark the kids’ heights on the wall, to worry about the strength of the boy’s arm. Let their mother be the one to worry about puberty and privacy. Let him just be the father.

He is preoccupied tonight as he is most nights. When the rain comes, he thinks not about the bald tires, about the bad brakes, but about something his brother said to him while they were snaking a backed-up toilet earlier in the day. You’re your own worst enemy, Bunk said as the electric snake rattled and whirred. What the hell’s that supposed to mean? he’d asked. Nothing. Sorry I said any- thing. Looks like we got it. Robert’s whole chest was hot with shame and rage, but he just said, Got what? Paper towels, Bunk said. Goddamn people and their goddamn paper towels. It’s like putting cement in the pipes.

He still feels the anger in his shoulders. He rolls his neck to try to loosen them up.

Sylvie is thinking about the parent-teacher conference they are going to. She knows what to expect for Ruby. She is her brilliant shining star. (This girl, here in the backseat, so absorbed in her book she has forgotten where she is. Who she is even.) She is gifted, the teacher will say: a word which conjures up holidays. Makes Sylvie imagine pretty wrapped packages. Ruby is special, the teacher in her sensible shoes and cardigan sweater will say with a nod. And this will make Sylvie blush with pride. And then feel terrible, because Ruby is not her only child. Because Jess, the little one, is sweet and gentle, but he struggles, and it seems there is little she can do to help him. She has watched him cry in frustration over the words on the page, the numbers, the problems. She tells herself that all that matters is that he is good and kind. Still, it breaks her heart a little, the way the whole world seems, already, to be disappointed in him. She tilts the mirror to look at him, this sweet boy, face pressed to the glass, looking at the rain that is starting to come down now in patterned sheets. He is mesmerized by the world. Captivated. It is enough for him, she has to remind herself, and there is something so good about that.

Sharp, sharp slivers.

What if you were simply able to rearrange them, to build something from these remains, reassemble the broken pieces into something new? Something stronger? Something both similar to what was and yet entirely different? What if you were able to make something indestructible? Something permanent?

But here is the new truth: the pieces are chipped and broken, some of them lost. A shattered glass on a tile floor. Some of them working their way already under your skin. Shards that will bur- row there, that sometimes will not bother you at all, but other times will make you wince with recollection. With the undeniable and unbearable pain of it all.

Here: the look on Sylvie’s face when she turns to ask if she looks okay. And none of them know whom she is asking, whose opinion matters the most. She is asking each of them and all of them. Because they are not only father, son, daughter, they are a family, and so they nod a collective nod of approval. They all love her more than she can know.

Here: Robert’s sigh when he resigns himself to nothing but static on the radio and clicks it off, filling the car with a peaceful silence.

Here: Ruby lost inside her book and Jess, hot cheek pressed to the glass, the rain making patterns on the window, and he watches, transfixed.

Here: the bridge, the covered bridge you’ve traveled a million times. The one on which you have closed your eyes and held your breath as you crossed over, the superstitions of childhood as powerful as God.

Here is the moment before it slips and shatters. Here is the river. Here is the bridge. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Discuss Ruby's obsession with bridges. How does the theme of bridge building manifest throughout the novel? What is meant by the title, The Forever Bridge?
2. Nessa comes to redefine the idea of "home" throughout the course of the novel. What does "home" mean for each of these characters? What does it mean to you?
3. This novel is also about female friendships. Discuss the rift that grows between Ruby and Izzy. Between Gloria and Sylvie. Have you ever experienced the loss of a female friend?

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