To shore

"But now when I ponder the whole thing as a grownup I think of it more as Aunt Hattie's miracle. I think when Frank and Caroline died, something in Hattie died too. It must take all your energy just to put one foot in front of the other when you're walking around dead. Then, when this mysterious man appeared on the beach, he saw something alive in her, and when she saw him, she saw it, too, and she clung to that little piece of life even after he disappeared, like someone desperatly hanging on to a branch over a raging river, hanging  on and hanging on and hanging on until they can finally pull themselves to shore."

Polly Horvath, The Trolls, New York, Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1999.