Synopsis:
When they met in the fourth grade, it was love at first sight for Mitchell Brody and Jessica Ramirez. He was the freckle-faced kid who stood up for her honor when he silenced the class bully who’d been teasing her because of her accent. She was the new kid whose family moved to San Juan Island, Washington, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and whom Mitch had thought was the most beautiful girl in the world.
She was his salvation from a strict upbringing. He was her knight in shining armor who had always looked out for her. Through the many years of porch-swinging, cotton-candied summer nights, autumn harvest festivals, and hand-in-hand walks planning for the ideal life together, they were inseparable…until 9/11, when the real world interrupted their Rockwell-esque small town life, and Mitch had joined the Marine Corps.
This is not just the story of a wounded warrior finally coming home to search for the love, and the world he abandoned twenty years before. It is also the story of a man who is seeking forgiveness and a way to ease the pain caused by every bad decision he’d ever made. It’s the story of a woman who, with strength and determination, rose up from the ashes of a shattered dream; but who never gave up hope that her one true love would return to her. As she once told an old friend: “Even before we met all those years ago, we were destined to be together in this life, and we will be together again, because even today we’re connected in a way that’s very special, and he needs to know about it before one of us leaves this earth.”
Favorite Lines:
“To him, those shadows resembled a life slipping away—a life he felt no more able to grasp and hold on to no more than he could grab and hold on to any one of those shadows—and it abruptly reminded him of one of the last times he saw Alex.”
“I’m hoping if I tell that lie often enough, there’s a chance it could come true.”
“Haven’t you ever been involved with someone so special that you couldn’t concentrate on anything, or you couldn’t catch your breath no matter how hard you’ve tried? Wasn’t there ever someone who made you feel that you wanted to spend your every waking moment with because maybe, just maybe, there wouldn’t be a tomorrow? That’s what it feels like to me when I’m with her. Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking that time really is running out. Apart from that, when we’re not together I feel lost, like I have no direction, no purpose for being. I feel like…as I once told Jess, like a sailboat that has no rudder or keel…completely at the mercy of the wind and the current.”
My Opinion:
I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.
Richard I. Levine’s Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is a quiet novel about coming home, but it’s also about what you carry with you when home isn’t the same place you left. Mitch Brody, a Marine pushed into medical retirement, returns to the San Juan Islands with more questions than answers. He wants to disappear into familiar places—the ferry crossings, the smell of salt air, the memory of an orchard long gone—but the past has other plans.
What I loved about this book is how ordinary moments are weighted with history. A doctor’s waiting room, a cup of coffee in a ferry galley, a drive down a rural road—Levine makes them feel alive with tension, because Mitch isn’t just moving through space, he’s moving through memory. Ghosts linger here, and not just Alex, the friend whose absence still cuts at him. There’s Jess, the woman he left behind, and the version of himself he can’t quite reconcile.
The writing is unhurried, like the islands themselves. There’s room for silence, for reflection, for scenes to stretch out the way real conversations do. By the end, I found myself rereading the opening lines about ashes on the water, realizing how much weight they’d gathered along the way.
This isn’t a book that hurries to a resolution. It’s a book that asks you to sit with Mitch while he figures out whether forgiveness—his own and others’—is still possible. In the end, like driftwood, he’s shaped by the tides that brought him here, but still moving with them.
Summary:
Overall, Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is a thoughtful, unhurried story about coming home and facing the past you can’t outrun. Richard I. Levine gives us a main character shaped by war, haunted by loss, and pulled back to the San Juan Islands to reckon with love, regret, and responsibility. It’s a novel about memory and forgiveness, written with the patience of the place it inhabits. For readers who appreciate reflective, character-driven fiction rooted in a strong sense of setting, this one lingers like salt air long after you’ve finished the last page. Be ready to cry and happy reading!
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Check out Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea here!