Review | An ode to manatees and an environmental warning wrapped up in a story of family and forgiveness

Amy Jones’ “We’re All in This Together” was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and her “Every Little Piece of Me” was named a CBC Best Book of the Year, so readers can expect a rollicking read from “Pebble & Dove.”

At the book’s unlikely heart is a 1,000-pound manatee living in a once-famous South Florida aquarium housed in an old Danish warship. Jones’ fast-paced narrative presents an endearingly looney cast of characters: a vicious Florida retiree, a group of pot-smoking older ladies, a desperate (and desperately loving) mother, a mysteriously dead grandmother and a rebellious tech-savvy teen.

Manatees are an endangered species and, though born in captivity, Pebble — once a star attraction — lives on, lovingly cared for by Ray, the sole remaining employee at Flamingo Key Aquarium and Tackle. Ray’s narrative has the soothing cadences of a bedtime story, as he explains his loyalty to a large sea mammal to his dying wife, who has asked him for a story.

We begin in strange territory that only becomes stranger as the scene switches to Massachusetts where dysfunction rules the Sandoval family.

At dawn, Lauren Sandoval wakes Dove, her adolescent daughter, telling her to pack for a Florida vacation. Their sudden road trip makes a kind of zany sense since things at home are falling apart. Whatever fantasy Lauren has believed in — her perfect family, her scented candle and oil business, her latest self-help guide — is collapsing.

Frantic and broke, Lauren “kidnaps” (in Dove’s words) her kid and heads south. Really, is there a better place to play out your domestic meltdown than in a sunshine state trailer park, with its blend of the lunatic and the familiar?

This is not Lauren’s first trip to Swaying Palms, but news of her mother’s death brings her back to discover what happened to her mother’s fortune. Imogen Starr, a renowned and glamorous photographer, was, in her daughter’s words, “a terrible mother.” Still, she was talented and rich. Her demise in a decrepit trailer makes no sense.

Dove barely inhabits the same planet as her mother. Her revenge pranks on the school’s mean girls have had consequences (but were very creative). She treasures her email correspondence with Imogen, but her grandmother seems to have vanished. Is Lauren deliberately silent about her mother’s death and her husband’s text (demanding a divorce)? Dove senses something wrong, but what is it?

In Florida they find more confusion — along with stinging fire ants, a vicious older neighbour and a resident rat.

As Lauren battles her dead mother’s neighbour, Dove’s astute detecting skills lead her to the aquarium and a trapped mammal whose loneliness mirrors her own. If Florida really has a magic kingdom, it exists in this aging 1930s attraction that resembles “an old black-and-white movie.”

Shy Pebble swims up to greet Dove, who describes her with wonder: “the twitching of her little whiskers, the creases on her face, the rolls around her neck, the tiny pocket of her eye puckered into her leathery skin.” She imagines that this aquarium-ship is “a portal to another realm” where a lost girl might find her home. Turns out she is as much a fantasist as her own mother, but with tech skills that attract 800,000 followers.

Florida chaos reaches operatic proportions after Dove’s inflammatory videos about Pebble’s plight attract a mob of angry environmentalists. When the “sea cops” (Florida Fish and Wildlife) arrive, a standoff ensues.

Like Imogen, like Ray, like Dove, Lauren has been entranced by the magic realm of this old roadside attraction. While Ray expresses his love, his regrets, Pebble chirps her way through watery decades. As we bid goodbye to Jones’ vividly imagined creatures, their weirdly endearing humanity lingers in our minds long after the final page.

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