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Book Description

The year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her husband, Sexton, are just settling into a new marriage and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While Honora fixes up the derelict house and searches for bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything they own to buy the house they both love. Along with millions of other Americans, he is blindsided by the stock market crash and finds himself penniless. The only work he can find is in a nearby mill, where a labor conflict is erupting into violence. Shaken by forces they scarcely understand, Honora and Sexton try to build a marriage and a home while overwhelmed by passions of every kind.

Writing with the power and immediacy that have made her novels bestsellers, Shreve unfolds interlocking lives, each with its own share of love, loss, and challenge. This is another gripping and unforgettable story of the human heart from one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.

Amazon.com

From its opening pages, Anita Shreve's Sea Glass surrounds the reader in the surprisingly rich feeling of the New Hampshire coast in winter. Vividly evoking the life of the coastal community at the beginning of the Great Depression, Sea Glass shifts through the multiple points of view of six principal characters; it's a skillfully created story of braided lives that bounces easily (even inevitably) from character to character. We learn how these lives come together following the stock market crash of 1929 and about the struggles of mill workers on the starkly beautiful New Hampshire coast during the following year. At the novel's center is the story of Honora Beecher, a young newlywed who compulsively collects sea glass along the beach as she collects unexpected friendship in her new beachside community, and Francis, a boy who discovers a father figure in the towering character of McDermott, an Irish mill worker, at a time when he most needs direction. Each character finds unexpected new purpose beyond the struggle to survive during that turbulent year among the dunes. First their lives barely touch, then they intersect, and finally they become inextricably bound. By the powerful and unexpected final scenes of the story, every point of view, every brilliant shard of life depends deeply on all the others. It is a very satisfying read--confidently told and deeply felt--with as many subtle colors and reflections as the sea glass that permeates the narrative.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　--Paul Ford

From Publishers Weekly

In addition to spinning one of her most absorbing narratives, Shreve here rewards readers with the third volume in a trilogy set in the large house on the New Hampshire coast that figured in The Pilot's Wife and Fortune's Rocks. This time the inhabitants are a newly married couple, Sexton and Honora Beecher, both of humble origins, who rent the now derelict house. In a burst of overconfidence, slick typewriter salesman Sexton lies about his finances and arranges a loan to buy the property. When the 1929 stock market crash occurs soon afterward, Sexton loses his job and finds menial work in the nearby mills. There, he joins a group of desperate mill hands who have endured draconian working conditions for years, and now, facing extortionate production quotas and reduced pay, want to form a union. The lives of the Beechers become entwined with the strikers, particularly a principled 20-year-old loom fixer named McDermott and Francis, the 11-year-old fatherless boy he takes under his wing. A fifth major character is spoiled, dissolute socialite Vivian Burton, who is transformed by her friendship with Honora. As Honora becomes aware that Sexton is untrustworthy, she is drawn to McDermott, who tries to hide his love for her. The plot moves forward via kaleidoscopic vignettes from each character's point of view, building emotional tension until the violent, rather melodramatic climax when the mill owners' minions confront the strikers. Shreve is skilled at interpolating historical background, and her descriptions of the different social strata the millworkers, the lower-middle-class Sextons, the idle rich enhance a touching story about loyalty and betrayal, responsibility and dishonor. This is one of Shreve's best, likely to win her a wider audience. 6-city author tour. (Apr. 9) Forecast: Expectations of brisk sales, indicated by the one-day laydown, will likely be achieved. Readers should find timely resonance in the setting of 1920s economic turbulence.

From Library Journal

Newlyweds Sexton and Honora Beecher have plenty of dreams, but they didn't plan on the stock market crash of 1929.

From Booklist

Shreve's latest is set during the 1920s in a New Hampshire house that has been featured in two of the author's previous novels, The Pilot's Wife (1998) and Fortune's Rocks (1999). After a three-month courtship, 20-year-old bank teller Honora marries 24-year-old typewriter salesman Sexton on a bright June day in 1929. They move into an abandoned house on the beach, which they have agreed to fix up in exchange for rent. Excited by the first heady days of their new marriage and their new life together, Honora and Sexton throw themselves into redecorating the house. When the owner of the house offers to sell it to them, they jump at the chance even though it will be a financial stretch. Their timing couldn't be worse. Within months, the stock market crashes, and their life changes completely when Sexton is forced to take a brutal, low-paying job in the local mill. In contrast to the riveting story lines of Shreve's previous titles, the plot is a bit thinner here. Yet the characters are compelling, especially the hard-living, smart-mouthed socialite Vivian and the reticent union activist McDermott. Even as Shreve stays resolutely on the surface of her story, readers will respond to her well-crafted prose. Fine entertainment.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Joanne Wilkinson

From AudioFile

SEA GLASS establishes a strong metaphor and keeps it going, with varying degrees of success. Newlywed Honora develops an interest in the colorful glass bits she finds on the beach, attracted by the color, depth and texture of what her husband Sexton calls "trash." But these thrown-away fragments have been made beautiful by the beatings they have taken and are too strong to break. Judith Ann Gantly gives a near perfect reading of a novel that is strongest when moving confidently forward as a piece of historical fiction and not languishing in the longings of romance. The tension of labor issues and the desperation brought about by the Depression make the story riveting, with the only flaws the lapses into melodrama as Sexton transforms into a neglectful husband and the upstart McDermott moves onto the scene. L.B.F.

Book Dimension

length: (cm)19.7 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)12.8