The Promise

Ann Weisgarber’s historical novel, The Promise (2013), follows the marriage of disgraced young pianist Catherine Wainwright, whose transition from city life to a remote island off the coast of Texas brings her face to face with challenges she had never before even imagined. An interesting novel, it includes, besides the protagonist Catherine, a deuteragonist named Nan, Catherine's rival, whose narrative voice is juxtaposed with Catherine's, offering alternate views of the action. The Promise is Weisgarber's second book, following her successful debut novel, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree.

The Promise takes place in 1900, beginning in Dayton, Ohio, one of the more fashionable big cities of the day. Catherine Wainwright, a piano teacher, is reeling: her affair with her cousin's husband has become known, scandalizing her family and the community. It has also affected her livelihood: as news of her indiscretion spreads, the parents of her piano students remove them from her tutelage, and with them goes her income. In a last-ditch attempt to acquire a financially secure life, Catherine reaches out by letter to a former suitor of hers, Oscar Williams. Oscar responds warmly; as Catherine puts it, “He was the only person whose letter was not cold or indifferent." As a child, Oscar had delivered coal to her family; now, he is a self-made man, a dairy farmer of great success in Texas. He is also, serendipitously for Catherine, a recent widower, with a motherless young son. Catherine sees Oscar as a ray of hope. If he proposes to her, she will have a reason and the means to leave her compromised life behind – to start anew. Oscar proposes, and Catherine, already (so she believes) psychologically prepared to do what she must, accepts the proposal. Before long, she has boarded a train headed to Galveston Island, Texas.

When Catherine reaches the island, many miles later, she is unprepared for what she finds. She had thought she was destined for the small but elegant city of Galveston. However, Oscar's dairy farm is located on the west side of the island – far from the lovely and civilized Galveston, with its churches and opera house. The west side of the island, on the contrary, has no electricity, no telephone lines – not even a school. It is certainly ill-prepared for the hurricane that comes sweeping in in September of 1900.



Although the oppressively hot atmosphere on the remote island of Galveston is almost unbearable, even worse is the state of Oscar's young son, Andre, who still grieves his dead mother. He is not the only new important figure to enter Catherine's life: on Galveston, we are introduced to the character Nan. Nan Ogden, the best friend of Oscar's former wife, Bernadette, had promised her at the end of her life to take care of Andre in her absence. When Catherine arrives unexpectedly, Nan is taken aback. She had been assiduously minding the house and taking care of both of William’s boys, secretly hoping that Oscar would come to love – and marry – her.

Nan's dashed hopes prevent her from being entirely welcoming to Catherine. Indeed, simple, rustic Nan finds Catherine to be an "oddity," and cannot fathom Oscar's admiration of her "high-handed manners,” extravagant clothes, and “city ways.” Oscar could hardly have fallen for someone more different than Nan. The townspeople, too, find Catherine surprising and difficult to figure out. The women, in particular, are suspicious of her. After Nan's introduction, the novel alternates chapters narrated by Catherine, with those narrated by Nan, who provides a different and contrasting perspective on the action of the novel (and on island life generally).

Even aside from Nan's subtle enmity, Catherine has difficulty adjusting to life on Galveston, standing out as an outsider and a townie. Nevertheless, her social difficulties are nothing compared to what nature has in store for her. The arrival of the hurricane to Galveston Island – a historical event, around which Weisgarber has built her novel – is the climax of The Promise. Weisgarber recounts in close concrete detail the devastation of the island by the hurricane. Simultaneously, the catastrophic occurrence forces Catherine and Nan to set aside their differences and work together. Once the hurricane has passed, nothing is the same as it was before.



The Promise is an excellent example of historical fiction: the hurricane that figures so prominently in the novel was an actual occurrence; not only was it the most destructive in the history of Texas, it remains the most destructive natural disaster in American history. Against this factual backdrop, Weisgarber places her taut novel about human interactions – but rather than dwarfing these interactions, the delicacy of Weisgarber's interpersonal focus, among other things, helps to humanize a catastrophe that might otherwise seem too distant and abstract to elicit a reaction from modern audiences.