Sea Room
Revised and expanded edition with new material plus a readers' guide for book groups.
Drawn by the reverential tone of his father’s voice, Jordi looked up to see a sleek ketch with a gleaming white hull and white sails materialize, wraithlike, out of the fog. In the light northeasterly breeze, she was sailing close-hauled on the starboard tack – main, mizzen and huge overlapping jib all drawing nicely. The leach of her jib shivered. She had, as sailors say, a bone in her teeth – the water parted at her bow, a double sash of white foam spreading our like trailing scarves. She moved steadily through the water, a fancy of pure, graceful power. Reflections of rushing water danced along her hull.
“I wonder what it would take to build something like that?” asked Gil.
But as he spoke, a dark gray mass resolved out of the undifferentiated white of the fog. Slowly it materialized and took on details like a photo in a developing bath. It seemed to be made of droplets of mist that were bonding together and transmuting themselves into molecules of metal.
It was a warship.
— From the novel
Description
Set during and after World War II, Sea Room chronicles three generations of the Dupuy family living on the rugged coast of Maine, harvesting crops from the land and lobsters from the sea. The Dupuys lead lives of honor and warm simplicity … until war ravages their peaceful existence.
When Gil Dupuy enlists in the army shortly after Pearl Harbor, his parents, wife and son Jordi are left to fight on the home front. Gil’s feisty mother, Zabet, grows food and organizes scrap drives to engage the enemies of her son. His young wife, Lydie, bravely battles loneliness and temptation. And his father, Pip, a World War I veteran, struggles to protect his family from the harshest truths of war. Together, Pip and Jordi keep alive Gil’s dream of building a fine sailboat, their way of salvaging beauty from the chaos and agony of war.
The very hardships that draw the family together also strain its bonds; and each of them is somehow forced to define what it means to live with integrity … even when, for one, it means facing a charge of murder.
Told in luminous and vivid prose that captures the rugged coast of Maine – the salt air, the cold embrace of fog, the ebb and flow of the tides, and the turn of the seasons – Sea Room is a timeless story about being pushed to the limits of adversity and fighting for the freedom to set your own course … the freedom of sea room.
In 2003 Sea Room won the prestigious Massachusetts Book Award. It has been the “all-city-reads” selection for several cities and has been a favorite of readers’ groups.
Reader's Guide • Background on Sea Room
Praise
“...transports the reader back in time when integrity and a higher purpose in life was not merely an aspiration but an honorable resolve ... exquisitely written.”
David Baldacci, New York Times
bestselling author
of Last Man Standing and Absolute Power.
“...stands out for [his] ability to bring both place and character to life for the reader.”
Massachusetts Center for the Book
“[He] perfectly captures [the] struggle with the elements as a way of life, the fury and the bounty of the ocean and the tough, basically good-hearted folk who understand life at its most basic ... core.”
Curledup.com
