The Other Side of the Bridge

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As the forces within arch bridges are pushed toward the ground, the arch is forced out at its base, which is referred to as thrust. As the height of an arch increases, its outward thrust increases. To keep an arch bridge standing, the trust is restrained by its abutments. An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Abutment: Abutments are the elements at the ends of a bridge, which provide support for it. They absorb many of the forces placed on the bridge and act as retaining walls that prevent the earth under the approach to the bridge from moving. Immediately I love the writing. Each line is loaded with subtle humor. The theme, and why you might be interested? Who doesn't connect with the competing emotions between one sibling and another and parents' preferences for one child over another? Ian Christopherson: Protagonist for odd-numbered chapters. Dr. Christopherson's son. Expected to be the next doctor. Has a perverted love for Laura, going as far as getting a job at Arthur's farm to get closer to her. This book consumed me. It made me sob when the family dies. It has made me think about how we deal with grief. I think it hit maybe a little too close too home. My sister died a few years ago and I guess I grieved but maybe there is that slight cloud hanging over me. This book helped me to realize some of that. The authors note at the end states that this story is based on true events but he embellished them slightly. The author wrote about two very different characters dealing with their grief. One of them has a fresh raw grief factor as his family just died. The other has been harboring her grief, coming to terms with it but not really wanting to do anything with it. The book is deep and heartfelt. I did finally figure the mystery out about 3/4 of the way through and I giggled with delight when I found out I was right. While it is probably not the typical tool to help with grief and the death of family but I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. I will be reading any book I can find by this author.What is the significance of the two time periods in the lives of the characters? How were the Dunn brothers shaped by a youth of economic hardship and the presence of POWs? How was Ian shaped by an era of greater liberation, with television for entertainment and “risqué” music on the radio? What dreams for the future did each of these generations possess? As the story of the Dunns unfolds, the novel also tells the story of Ian, whose life overlaps with the Dunn family when he takes a part-time job on the farm. As the novel opens, Ian is restless, dreams of leaving the small town of Struan, and is obsessed with Laura Dunn. Eventually, he becomes less sure of what he wants to do, less sure he wants to escape Struan, and less obsessed with Laura Dunn. Arch: An arch is a curved structure that spans an open space. Bridges featuring arches were among the earliest large-scale engineering and construction projects. Meanwhile, Dave Riley, a marketing executive in New York, has sorrows of his own. Grasping at straws after tragedy strikes his family, he decides to follow a daydream that has turned into an obsession: to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge on a motorcycle on the Fourth of July. Odd-numbered chapters are told from the point-of-view of Ian Christopherson, the son of a doctor who takes a job on Arthur Dunn’s farm, chiefly to be near Laura Dunn. Even-numbered chapters follow Arthur Dunn. The older of the two Dunn brothers, Arthur is repeatedly portrayed as a large, lumbering, slow-thinking man happiest plowing the fields of his farm near the fictional town of Struan, in Northern Canada.

Ian, the son of Struan's physician, asks Arthur for a summer job because he is smitten with Laura, Arthur's beautiful wife. Ian turns out to be a good worker and a special relationship develops between Ian and the Dunn family. Oh, the quagmire of family dynamics. There's nothing predictable about who we are born to be or how we will be received by those around us when we appear. At times it seems to be a chemistry experiment, with some personality solutions melding together in harmony and evolution, and others resisting and exploding. The endless ways we can disappoint and be disappointed. When he was younger, Ian had assumed that as you got older things became clear. Adults had seemed so sure, so knowledgeable, not just about facts and figures but about the big questions: the difference between right and wrong; what was true and what wasn't; what life was about. He'd assumed that you went to school because you had to learn things, starting off with the easy stuff and moving on to the bigger issues, and once you'd learned them that was it, the way ahead opened up and thereafter life was simple and straightforward. what a joke. The older he got, the more complicated and obscure everything became. He understood nothing anymore--nothing and nobody, including himself." Oh, does Ian have my sympathy. I remember being in my late twenties with a job, a marriage, a mortgage, and a baby on the way pretty much having these same thoughts. I will say in my sixties that I finally feel a little more sure and confident, and it has been a long road getting here. some of the characters weren't as fully fleshed-out as i would have liked, but on the whole, that did not have adverse affects. my biggest issue was that i figured out one of the revelations too early, so when it was finally written out, i wasn't surprised, more annoyed that it occurred exactly as i had deduced.

A two-hinged arch is generally used on mid-sized bridges because the pinned connection at the base is better able to handle temperature fluctuations. Or was he merely surprised at how easy it was to give in to an impulse, and carry through the thought which lay in your mind? Simply to do whatever you wanted to do, and damn the consequences. Skew arch: A skew (sometimes referred to as an oblique arch) is a style of arch where its faces are not perpendicular to the abutments of the bridge. The interior of the arch takes the form of a parallelogram, rather than a rectangle or square. Using a skew arch allows a bridge to cross a span at virtually any angle, rather than just a straight line.