Yellow Sky, Emerald Sea

"A lovely, intelligent novel. Yellow Sky, Emerald Sea possesses timeless and universal appeal and will give pleasure to any reader who appreciates good literature." -Mark Spencer, Winner of Omaha Prize for the Novel
That day of hell and grace....
In the afternoon of September 21, 1938, a deadly hurricane bludgeons New England's south coast with no warning. On a sandy point straddling Rhode Island and Connecticut, all the summer houses-with their owners clinging to roofs-blow into the bay. The next day, an aspiring reporter picks up a pen to interview his surviving neighbors. Will their memories survive?
Readers whose tastes run to Alexander McCall Smith, Rita Mae Brown, and Anne Tyler will enjoy this feel-good contemporary story honoring the survivors of the Hurricane of 1938 in Rhode Island. In this literary, yet fast-paced tale laced with intrigue, corruption, and romance, protagonist Vieve Clough Beale, portrait artist, recovering alcoholic, and widow with storm wreckage of a different sort, arrives on the Weekapaug Coast in the run-up to the eightieth anniversary of the hurricane to visit her beloved Uncle Carl, retired jewelry magnate. When he doesn't show for dinner, Vieve-accompanied by her feisty terrier mix, Jack West-stay on to search for him. As the search drags on, Vieve accepts an invitation from charismatic acrylic artist Marley Kinnell to compete together in a mural competition for the hurricane's eightieth anniversary commemoration. And then Vieve's beloved terrier goes missing. What Vieve finds as she delves into preparations for the commemoration and the increasingly threatening activities at an abandoned coastal fort tests her loyalties and upends her future just as the town faces its own memories of hell and grace.
The contemporary story, threaded with powerful hurricane-day vignettes of death and survival, is a resonant tale of love, ambition, loss, and the rich legacy of time and memory.