At the Shores

The dunes of Jerry Engels’s childhood are those of Indiana Shores, a small slice of paradise resting between Gary and the industrial furnaces of Chicago. Jerry loves Lake Michigan and swimming its waters; he loves the beach and the live dune where he plays. But mostly, Jerry loves women.

 

This isn’t the awkward lust of an adolescent; Jerry is a boy who loves women and everything about them: a flower tucked into the hair, or the length of a leg. Teenage Jerry is a charmer, a flirt, “an erotic pantheist or a pantheistic eroticist.” Always, in his honesty and quirkiness, he is an irresistible and lovable character, himself. When he falls for Rosalind, his love takes on new, humorous, and wondrous dimensions.

 

At the Shores celebrates love in all of its forms; it is a coming-of-age novel for all generations.