From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on an Italian island about a navy wifes reckoning with power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age. "e;A romantic maelstrom of struggle, politics, and perseverance."e; Richmond MagazineA 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 When twenty-three-year-old Eileen OMalley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesnt expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileens 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 islandtaking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgionesshe begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from. Still, it doesnt 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 US government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the islandnot to mention all of Italydoesnt 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 US Navy. Soon, Eileens marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secretsand to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one shes been handed. Atmospheric, sexy, and quietly defiant, The Half Life is a story of love, complicity, and awakeningof 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.
