Selfishness

 Love can be defined as willing the good of the other.  The two major characters in The Divide by Nicholas Evans are too selfish to will the good of anybody but themselves.  They do what they want and to hell with everyone else.

The novel begins with two skiers in Montana, finding a frozen corpse.  It belongs to Abbie Cooper.  How poor Abbie ends up dead on the side of a mountain, is the story.

Abbie's father breaks up his marriage by dumping his teenage children and wife to shack up with an artist.  Everyone is devasted!  He does what he wants.

Abbie is crushed.  She is also away from home, at college in Montana.  Her family home is New York.  But it's not home without her father.  She feels traumatized.  She's majoring in environmental science, and it is through her environmental interest that she meets Rolf.  Rolf and Abbie write graffiti and hold signs protesting corporate rape of the environment.  Abbie becomes obsessed with Rolf--think Stockholm syndrome.  Soon Abbie is committing arson.  Then, the arson turned to murder.  Abbie is stuck.  She's on the run, away from government authorities, because she is now considered a terrorist.  Rolf uses Abbie and when she finally realizes it, she runs to hide with a former boyfriend.  

Right from the beginning of Abbie meeting Rolf, she wanted to go home to New York, but Rolf wasn't keen on it.  Is that love?  Is he willing the good of Abbie?  Abbie is as selfish as her father and sticks to Rolf, just as her father sticks to his new lover.

The author, Nicholas Evans writes masterfully.  His descriptions make me want to ski the slopes.  The book is so thrilling you could call it a page turner.  It was one of those that kept me up too late to finish it.  Then I couldn't sleep!