Category: Books

Books

A Friend’s Review

edwardmcsweegan

“I just finished reading “Shadow Of The Moon” and must say that it was an interesting read.  I had a tough time starting it, likely due to knowing the author and I found I was constantly asking, “Where did that come from?”  You had to have done some quite voluminous research for this one.

That said, the further I got into it, the more I became invested in the story and the characters.  You touched on so many things other than the science – the geography of the area at that time, the dress of the characters, the women’s suffrage movement and the general treatment of women (especially female scientists), the competition of the railway companies, and on, and on.

I read late into the night last night and finished up at the pool today (greatly reducing my time in the water).  As with all good literature, I found my reading pace quickening as I read further into the book, wondering from about 100 pages to go, how will he end it?  What will become of everyone?

…you ended with a wonderful section of author’s notes which I not only found fascinating; but it also piqued my curiosity – I shall be doing some character googling later tonight.”

Books, Writing

A Second Novel

edwardmcsweegan

I just signed a contract for my second novel, The Cottage Industry. What’s it about?

It’s 1922. David Enders, a pilot for the French Army during the war, returns to Connecticut. He’s been wandering post-war France as a nervous pilot: a term the army uses to distinguish airmen from the mass of shell-shocked soldiers who fought in the trenches. Now he’s home to contend with a difficult father, a sister locked in a mysterious post-influenza coma, and a volatile country still in the grips of wartime paranoia and civil liberty restrictions. 

He finds work with a real estate company building private beach homes along the coast—the effect of which will be to close off the shoreline to all but a few lucky middle-class buyers.  The company’s private beaches are restricted to “true Americans,” and those property restrictions force Enders into awkward encounters with ethnic families and the NAACP. 

He’s working in Old Lyme. It’s a summertime town of bootleggers, rum runners, flappers, clammers, crooked deputies, and the famous Old Lyme Art Colony whose impressionist painters don’t want their bucolic landscapes marred by cookie-cutter cottages. Here, Enders doesn’t so much reinvent himself as rebuild himself. He starts flying again only to be shot at by rum runners. He falls in love with a young artist—Karen Bates—only to have a bent cop threaten her with wartime public health laws. Lost liberties and personal secrets test Enders’ still fragile character. He and Karen are two people surrounded by suffocating customs and illiberal laws. They’re looking for an escape. 

Books

Hal, Review this Book

edwardmcsweegan

So, a friend of mine read my book, Shadow of the Moon, and decided to post a review of it. But rather than write it herself, she had an AI do it. She dropped in a few key words and out popped a brief, complimentary review. I guess that spells the doom of book reviewers.