When the storms rage, you will feel the water pulling you in. A unique, harrowing, and strangely beautiful book. -Stephanie Cowell, author of The Boy in the Rain and The Man in the Stone Cottage: a novel of the Brontë sisters, American Book Award recipientIn prose that sparks with electricity, these stories set the gazebo on fire, and leave us astonished at what devastations humans, and islands, can live through. - Marjorie Hudson, author of Indigo Field, Accidental Birds of the Carolinas, and Searching for Virginia Dare
Ultimately, Wilson's collection accomplishes something quite extraordinary: it creates a rich, dramatic world that is novelistic in scope, while building this world one remarkable story at a time. -Scott Gould, author of Beneath a Fallen Sky and Peace Like a River
On Georgia's barrier islands, ancient tides carve away memory and hurricanes reshape both landscape and lives.
A young woman with inherited psychic gifts searches the marshes for her missing brother. A grieving widow faces her estranged daughter across the ruins of their family inn. At an abandoned lighthouse, a young husband carrying an unbearable secret finds unexpected grace. A minister walks into the ocean seeking something he cannot name. A lighthouse keeper waits for a girl who will never return.
These eleven linked stories explore the liminal spaces where the living meet the dead, where faith confronts doubt, and where love persists despite devastating loss. Characters cross paths at the Island Escape Inn, on dolphin boats, at beach weddings-their separate griefs quietly weaving through generations.
With prose that honors both the beauty and brutality of coastal life, Gerry Wilson illuminates how we survive what we cannot outrun-and sometimes find our way home.
