Nights in Rodanthe (2002)

Nights in Rodanthe is a romantic love story novel by American writer Nicholas Sparks published in September 2002.

Set in Rodanthe, North Carolina, the story follows the intense and close romance of a divorced mother, Adrienne Willis, and a divorced father and surgeon, Paul Flanner. The novel's two main protagonists meet in an inn in Rodanthe and fall strongly in love. However, fate and destiny falls upon them when they realize that leaving Rodanthe would mean going back to their separate lives.

Sparks based parts of his story on his own life's events, particularly his courting of the woman he married, Cathy Cote. Themes of genuine romantic love, and sacrifice are incorporated into the novel. Nights in Rodanthe was adapted into a 2008 film of the same name.

Plot summary

The story has a framing device set in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in 2002 where part-time librarian Adrienne Willis is comforting her daughter Amanda, who is struggling to raise her children because she is still mourning her husband’s death. To show her daughter she will eventually recover, Adrienne tells Amanda about the time she met a surgeon named Paul Flanner when Amanda was thirteen.

In 1988, Adrienne managed a Rodanthe inn for a friend taking a leave of absence, for an opportunity of escapism. She had divorced her husband, who abandoned her for a younger woman, and she was taking care of her sick father while raising her three children. As soon as she arrives at the inn, a major storm is forecast. Her only customer is Paul Flanner, a 54-year-old recently divorced surgeon also wanting to escape his hectic life, who had sold his house and was being sued for malpractice. The two fall in love throughout the week but realize they will have to go back to their old lives. After conversations about their families, Paul decides to join his estranged son in an Ecuadorian medical clinic to rework their relationship, communicating with Adrienne through letters when she returns to Rocky Mount with her family. The romance continued, but Paul later died.

In the present, Amanda is annoyed her mother did not tell her and her two brothers about the situation. She reads Adrienne’s last contact from Ecuador, written by Paul’s son Dr. Mark, thanking her mother for helping his father realize how arrogant he had been.

Writing

Sparks developed the rudiments of Nights in Rodanthe while he was writing his fourth novel, The Rescue. He said that he contemplated writing "another short love story ... that harkens back to poignant emotional intensity of The Notebook", his first published novel. Unlike his other works, Nights in Rodanthe was not inspired by a specific person who was involved in Sparks' life; the story drew upon an incident when his mother-in-law requested as a Christmas present that her name and that of her husband, Paul, would appear in a Sparks novel. So Sparks worked on a story that his in-laws would "not only enjoy, but not offend them as well".

Sparks encountered difficulties; it "just didn't seem to come together". For Sparks, there should be an "element that [would keep] the characters apart in order to have drama". Throughout Sparks' career, he has attempted to not use the same element twice, so it had become harder for him to write each new novel. He comments, "If I don't have the 'conflict', I don't have the story, and for the life of me, I couldn't come up with something new to keep the characters apart. ... I also wanted to write a story using older characters, again because it's something I haven't done (with the exception of The Notebook, in which they're elderly, not middle-aged)."

Sparks diverted his attention by working on A Bend in the Road, his fifth novel, and the first draft of The Guardian, which succeeded the release of Nights in Rodanthe. However, The Guardian imposed a "tremendous challenge" to Sparks, and he reckoned it would require a "great deal of re-writing". He was tired of writing the novel and needed a break from it.

So Sparks returned to Nights in Rodanthe: "My mind then returned to the story I'd been thinking about, and suddenly everything began to click. Within days, I suddenly knew exactly how to tell the story. I knew the characters, the setting, and especially and most importantly, the 'conflict' that would keep the characters apart." Sparks started writing the novel in December 2001. He finished the draft in February 2002, and editing continued until April of the same year.

Style and themes

Sparks set the novel in Rodanthe, a small town in the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. He chose Rodanthe because, according to him, it "looks wonderful on the page, and the name itself conjures up a mixture of mystery and sensuality", adding he had wished to write a novel about the place. In an interview, Sparks said, "In Nights in Rodanthe, I needed a sense of isolation. Find another area of coastline in the U.S. that isn't developed where that could happen." The inn, where the majority of the events in the novel happened, is fictitious. According to Sparks, there are a number of bed and breakfasts in other Outer Banks towns that are similar to his description of the inn in the novel, but he chose to create it for the story.

Sparks based parts of the story from his real life events, though less so compared to his previous novels. These events were given twists to "make the story as interesting as possible". The story parallels Sparks' relationship with his wife, Cathy Cote. In his speech in 2002 for the Friends of the Library in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Sparks cited several similarities of the story with his own life. Sparks and his wife, in their senior years, met in a small coastal town where they traveled to in hopes of respite. He recalls, "I sensed something kind and wonderful about Cathy almost immediately, though Cathy (like Adrienne) was a little bit more hesitant in her feelings for me."