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Safe Haven - Does It Truly Exist?

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Is there a safe haven for everyone? That is the question the main character Katie deals with in Nicholas Sparks’ book Safe Haven.  Sparks delivers yet again a powerful and emotional read with a twist that I have not read from him yet – suspense and mystery.  In this book, it isn’t all about love and loss. It’s about survival and protecting yourself even if the thing you are protecting yourself from is you.

The novel starts with the newest resident of a small North Carolina town, Katie.  She came to Southport, NC to start over and hopes no one notices. She rents a small cottage on a gravel road out of the way and takes a waitressing job at a local watering hole.  As much as she wants to blend in people start to notice her and ask questions as Southport is a very small and tightknit community.  She befriends the local general store owner Alex and his 2 kids, Kristen and Josh.  Hints about Katie’s past start to pop-up both for herself and Alex.  She begins to shut down and doesn’t allow herself to feel anything no matter how safe she feels in Southport and with Alex.  She can’t believe it. She won’t let herself get comfortable because her past is always in the forefront of her mind. 

Alex starts to get her to open up to him and reveal her past. He never pushed, always waited until she was ready to tell him something. He didn’t care about her past before and after he found out.  He had enough experience to know that she was a victim, not the reason it happened.  With love comes pain and with pain comes love. It is a circle, a cycle that eventually will be broken but not without revealing the true person you are.  That is what Alex tried to convey to Katie and help her understand.

But the question still remains, is love really a safe haven? Katie thought so with Kevin but it wasn’t.  Granted there was something mentally wrong with him but at some point  and even after his death she did love the man no matter what he did to her.  With Alex, love is a safe haven. His love, comfort and understanding are safe and protected.  A man like Kevin is one in a million. But so is Alex. In the end, Katie let herself feel because the safe haven of Alex’s love will always win out no matter what.  So the answer is yes – love is a safe haven.

No matter how much you want to hide from love and friendship after you have been hurt, love and friendship is what is going to get you back to being you and get you back to being alive.  You just have to have the courage and strength to put yourself out there again and find it.  Katie was. Are you?

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