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A Novel
From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on a remote Italian island about a navy wife's reckoning with power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age.
When twenty-three-year-old Eileen O'Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn't expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen's got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender.
In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of navy wives who are hell-bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island—taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones—she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from.
Still, it doesn't take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the U.S. government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the island—not to mention all of Italy—doesn't go communist in the next election.
When Italian activists and scientists begin to sound the alarm about possible nuclear contamination in the water, the island erupts in a series of protests, made worse by the ongoing mishaps of the U.S. Navy. Soon, Eileen's marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets—and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she's been handed.
Atmospheric, sexy, and quietly defiant, The Half Life is a story of love, complicity, and awakening—of one woman forced to choose between loyalty to her husband and country and to the Italian locals who show her the high cost of American exceptionalism.
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I read an ARC of The Half Life by Rachel Beanland and really enjoyed it. It is scheduled to be released on July 14. I think it is a good model of the new generation of historical fiction novels - a t...
-Diane_Jones
"Beautiful...Beanland combines an intricate plot with deep moral insights into a woman's willingness to defy expectations for the sake of justice, and she captures the magical beauty of the island setting. It's a propulsive tale of love, loyalty, and the power of self-discovery." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A leisurely paced feminist coming-of-age story packed with details about a fascinating chapter in American naval history." —Library Journal
"A thoughtful coming-of-age story of one woman's desire to live an authentic life." —Booklist
"A captivating, whip-smart novel about love, loyalty, and a woman torn between two lives. I utterly adored it." —Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country
"The Half Life is a page-turner. Historical in setting, but contemporary in emotional terrain, I felt immersed in the landscape of La Maddalena and in the lives of these characters from the very first page." —Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
This information about The Half Life was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Tania del Carmen Fernández
Rachel Beanland is the author of The House Is on Fire and Florence Adler Swims Forever, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. She is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.
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