At sixteen, Maggie Dawes is sent away from her Seattle home to live with her Aunt Linda in Ocracoke, a remote village in North Carolina, after becoming pregnant. Initially feeling isolated, she meets Bryce Trickett , a handsome and kind-hearted teenager who tutors her in geometry and introduces her to photography—a passion that eventually defines her life. Their summer of first love becomes the foundation for Maggie's future, even as she prepares to give her child up for adoption.
While this structure can sometimes slow down a plot, here it serves to build suspense. The reader knows early on that something momentous happened to separate Maggie and Bryce, and the slow reveal of that "secret" drives the narrative tension. The contrast between the sun-drenched, sandy beaches of the Outer Banks past and the sterile, wintery isolation of the New York present creates a poignant emotional landscape. the wish by nicholas sparks pdf