Under the Eye of the Storm - by John Hersey (Paperback)

About the Book

When their sailboat Harmony is thrust into the center of a great storm, two men and their wives face some brutal changes both in themselves and in their relationships with each other.

Book Synopsis

Dr. Tom Medlar's sailboat, the Harmony, is his pride and joy, and the focus of more lavish and meticulous care than he affords to either his career or his marriage. But then one day Tom takes his wife, Audrey, and their friends, Flick and Dottie Hamden, out for a pleasure cruise and into the unexpected path of a hurricane. As the deadly storm rages around them, the fault lines in the friendships and marriages begin to crack, and John Hersey's riveting adventure story rapidly becomes something deeper and more unsettling. Widely praised on its initial publication in 1967, Under the Eye of the Storm remains a masterpiece of psychological fiction from one of the most accomplished authors of the twentieth century.

Review Quotes

"A tight, suspenseful tale." --The Wall Street Journal

"An impressive and haunting piece of work, one that keeps an unremitting grip on the imagination long after the reader has put it down." --Saturday Review

"Fascinating. . . . Under the Eye of the Storm brings four extremely contemporary people into a tight, primitive situation of great danger, and watches them tick." --Denver Post

About the Author

JOHN HERSEY was born in Tientsin, China, in 1914 and lived there until 1925, when his family returned to the United States. He studied at Yale and Cambridge, served for a time as Sinclair Lewis's secretary, and then worked several years as a journalist. Beginning in 1947 he devoted his time mainly to writing fiction. He won the Pulitzer Prize, taught for two decades at Yale, and was president of the Authors League of America and Chancellor of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Hersey died in 1993.