It's 1929, and Honora Beecher and her husband Sexton are enjoying their new marriage in a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. Honora is renovating the rundown property and searching for pieces of coloured glass washed up on the beach. Sexton attempts to buy the house they both adore, but with disastrous results: like many other Americans, he is a victim of the stock market crash and is financially wiped out. He is forced to work in a nearby mill, where a labour conflict is having violent results

Taking to tomorrow's meet-up.

Picked from the bulging multitude of available books at the meet-up to be re-released - probably at CMK library. I have read this one so I'll add my review before it moves on.


Covering 18 months in 1929 and 1930 this story is once again set in Fortune's Rocks and the house featured in 2 other Anita Shreve novels I've read "The Pilot's Wife" and the eponymous "Fortune's Rocks". The backdrop is the stock market crash and mill strikes, how this affects the characters and how their stories converge.
I enjoyed the tragedy and despair but also the hope. Although I did find the ending a bit 'faux' after what had gone before. However, another great read and I look forward to reading more of her books.

I started this book having convinced myself (for no good reason) that Anita Shreve was being lazy in using the same location for this book as used in others... however, because of the quality of the writing, I was straight away drawn into the New England setting for the action which takes place at the time of the 1929 stock market crash.
This is Anita Shreve at her best and is well worth reading.
KORKY'S DAD

Life in New England at the start of the depression seen through the eyes of the new wife of a travelling salesman, workers at the local cotton mill and a wealthy summer visitor. As times got harder and wages at the mill are cut and cut again they are thrown together.
Another excellent novel from this writer.
KORKY'S MUM

Passed onto a pal for her to enjoy.