Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 7, 2003 - Hal Jacobs

Is it worse to lose your sister or your husband? That's the question Maryanne Stahl poses in The Opposite Shore (New American Library, $12.95 paperback) after a 40-some-thing woman discovers her husband and sister locked in a kiss on her husband's sailboat. Rather than confront William and Anna, Rose moves to a nearby island community with her teenage daughter and rebuilds her life around her emerging painting career.

In alternating chapters, Stahl, a native New Yorker who lives near Atlanta, shows the weight of days and weeks pressing on her characters as a result of their choices. William, an English professor in New Haven, must decide if he should leave everyone behind and accept a one-year post as visiting professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Anna contemplates quitting her job at a nature center to crew on schooners sailing across the Atlantic.

Slowly, a sense of balance returns. And just as a stormy kiss shattered their relationships in the first place, a stormy sea brings everyone back together in an arrangement that no one could have foreseen.