Opening in 1962 with the fatal heart attack of forty-three-year-old Michael Gannon, a WWII veteran and former POW in the Pacific, SHINING SEA plunges into the turbulent lives of his widow and kids over subsequent decades, crisscrossing from the beaches of southern California to the Woodstock rock festival in its heyday, London’s gritty nightlife in the eighties to Scotland’s remote Inner Hebrides islands, the dry heat of Arizona desert to the pale stone of the Columbia University campus to the fertile farmland of Massachusetts.
At heart a family story, SHINING SEA is about the ripple effects of war, the imprint of history on daily lives, the passing down of memory, the making of myth, and the power of the ideal of heroism to lead us astray but also, sometimes, to keep us afloat. It is a story of resilience and redemption.
Anne Korkeakivi is also the author of the novel AN UNEXPECTED GUEST, also published by Little, Brown, as well as numerous works of short fiction and nonfiction for publications in the US, UK, and online.
www.annekorkeakivi.com