Beach Music

Beach music is a recurring motif throughout the novel. The motif serves to establish and enrich the reader’s understanding of Jack’s connection to his home, his love for Shyla, and his nostalgia. For Jack, these three things (home, the past, and Shyla) are inextricably tied. He has cut all three from his life at the outset of the novel. In the opening chapters of the novel, the only mention of beach music is in Jack’s memory; he tells Leah the story of dancing with Shyla to “Save the Last Dance for Me” by The Drifters, a quintessential beach music song. Jack fills the story, and the memory of that song, with meaning for his daughter, using it to represent his love for Shyla and their powerful connection.

In Chapter 25, once Jack and Leah have returned to South Carolina, they engage actively with beach music, dancing the shag with Jack’s brothers. “Carolina beach music,” Dupree says to Leah, “the holiest sound on earth” (406). The music has a powerful effect on both Leah and Jack. Leah “was consumed and enlarged […] as powerful as a fairy tale queen” (407). Listening to the music of her parents’ past makes her feel strong and alive, as well as connected to her family for the first time.