Sea of Tranquility - by Paul Russell (Paperback)

About the Book

By the acclaimed author of "The Coming Storm, " this is the critically celebrated story tracing a disintegrating nuclear family across two decades of American life--from the early '60s to the '80s.

Book Synopsis

From Paul Russell, the award-winning author of The Coming Storm, comes the story of a splinted nuclear family - spanning from the optimistic time of the first moon shot to the bleak time of the early AIDS years.

Astronaut Allen Cloud suffers severely from post-lunar depression, and dreams of returning to the far-off world in which he'd finally found peace. His wife's search for happiness takes her from the bottom of a bottle in middle America to Turkey, where she finds spiritual salvation. Their gay son Jonathan embarks on a journey of self-discovery, leading him from Houston to the sophisticated gay world of the East Coast. His acknowledgment of his sexual identity and pursuit of physical and spiritual fulfillment has its counterpoint in a repressed preacher's son, whose desires Jonathan awakens in high school and whose destiny Jonathan permanently alters.

Told by a brilliant quartet of voices, Sea of Tranquillity demonstrates a spectrum of emotion that sweeps from razor-sharp wit to wrenching heartache, from anger and alienation to acceptance and reconciliation.

Review Quotes

"This book of martyrs and lovers of one family lost in space and an image of America in the age of astronauts is a real find." -- Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio

"Tracks the disintegration of a picture-perfect American family across two momentous decades of time and immense distances of space, literal and emotional...telling us in frank, confessional terms about the many ways to love and lose in modern America." --The Boston Globe

"Russell weaves a web of personal relationships subtly and expertly, teasing out in the process human truths that shock and satisfy. This orchestration comes to a gratifying and occasionally bittersweet climax at the novel's close, when Jonathan's fate becomes almost incidental to the positive effects he's wrought, albeit often painfully, in others' lives." - Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Paul Russell is the author of five novels - including The Coming Storm - as well as The Gay 100, a work of non-fiction. His most recent novel was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award as well as the winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award. He is a professor at Vassar College and lives in upstate New York.