The Prince of Tides

One thing I always like to do with books is figure out where the title comes from, why it was named that or where the reference is from or whatever. In this book, it turns out to be straightforward at first but towards the end of the book there's more deeper, hidden meaning.
This book is confusing to summarize... I don't know how I'm going to do this, because half the book takes place in the present (which is really 1986) and the rest takes place in the narrator, Tom Wingo's childhood. So here we go, read what you choose to from here on out:

The Story From Childhood
Tom Wingo was born, along with his twin sister Savannah, into an abusive family on a dark, stormy night. They already had an older brother (barely older) named Luke, and their mother's name was Lila. While their father was at war, this small family of four moved into their grandparents, Amos and Tolitha's house. This is a dysfunctional family from the start: Tolitha picks out her coffin in her midfifties so as "not to give her family any trouble" and every year on Good Friday, Amos carries a giant wooden cross down the main street of town for the heck of it, or so it seems. And family interests? Well, they include collecting black widow spiders.
When Dad comes back the Wingo family is reunited in the then-and-still-partly-very-racist South Carolina. And this is the fifties, so there's even more tension. Savannah and Luke and Tom grow up, surviving their father abusing them and their mother, their father's random get-rich-quick schemes, and anything else you could toss in for one heck of a traumatizing childhood. Of course, it all gets worse and worse as it goes on...

The Story In The Present
Flash forward to Tom in his mid-forties. His wife is cheating on him, Luke has passed away, he has three beautiful daughters, he fights with his mother daily, and he just got the news that Savannah tried to commit suicide. He and his twin have not spoken in three years.
So Tom packs up for some "alone time" and moves into Savannah's New York apartment, a drastic change from the small-town racist South they come from. He is telling his childhood story to Savannah's shrink, Dr. Lowenstein, to help figure out what she's been repressing that made her try to kill herself. (That's where the whole past-present thing gets confusing, which is why I put it in this format.)
Tom gets to know Dr. Lowenstein pretty well, well enough for her to ask him to coach his son since he's a football coach. Actually, they get to know each other so well that Tom ends up falling in love with her. Yes, even though he's already a got a wife, but isn't that how all sad stories end up?

This book does have a sort-of-shocker of an ending, though. Well, at least it makes you think quite a bit, and even though the ending of the past story is heartbreaking, the ending of the present story is pretty happy in someways. It just kind of shows you how life can be beautifully heartbreaking and heartbreakingly beautiful at the same time, if you get what I mean, with maybe a little sarcasm thrown in there.