It is a house on the beach. Honora doesn't mind renting - despite its age and all its flaws, the old house is the perfect place for a new marriage. She and Sexton throw themselves into fixing it up, just as they throw themselves into their new life together. Each morning, Honora collects sea glass washed up on the shore, each piece carrying a different story in its muted hues. Sexton finds a way to buy the house, but his timing is perfectly wrong. The economy takes a sickening plunge, and as financial pressures mount, Honora begins to see how little she knows this man she has married - and to realize just how threatening the world outside her front door can be. Like those translucent shards that Honora finds on the beach, Sea Glass is layered with the textures, colors, and voices of another time. There is Vivian, an irreverent Boston socialite who becomes Honora's closest friend even as she rejects every form of convention. McDermott, a man who works in a nearby mill, presses Honora's deepest notions of trust - even as he embroils her in a dangerous dispute. And there's Alphonse, a boy whose openness becomes the bond that holds these people together as their world is flying apart. From its opening pages, Anita Shreve's Sea Glass surrounds the reader in the surprisingly rich feeling of the New Hampshire coast in winter. Vividly evoking the life of the coastal community at the beginning of the Great Depression, Sea Glass shifts through the multiple points of view of six principal characters; it's a skillfully created story of braided lives that bounces easily (even inevitably) from character to character. We learn how these lives come together following the stock market crash of 1929 and about the struggles of mill workers on the starkly beautiful New Hampshire coast during the following year. At the novel's center is the story of Honora Beecher, a young newlywed who compulsively collects sea glass along the beach as she collects unexpected friendship in her new beachside community, and Francis, a boy who discovers a father figure in the towering character of McDermott, an Irish mill worker, at a time when he most needs direction. Each character finds unexpected new purpose beyond the struggle to survive during that turbulent year among the dunes. First their lives barely touch, then they intersect, and finally they become inextricably bound. By the powerful and unexpected final scenes of the story, every point of view, every brilliant shard of life depends deeply on all the others. It is a very satisfying read--confidently told and deeply felt--with as many subtle colors and reflections as the sea glass that permeates the narrative. --Paul Ford Newlyweds Sexton and Honora Beecher have plenty of dreams, but they didn't plan on the stock market crash of 1929. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Shreve's latest is set during the 1920s in a New Hampshire house that has been featured in two of the author's previous novels, The Pilot's Wife (1998) and Fortune's Rocks (1999). After a three-month courtship, 20-year-old bank teller Honora marries 24-year-old typewriter salesman Sexton on a bright June day in 1929. They move into an abandoned house on the beach, which they have agreed to fix up in exchange for rent. Excited by the first heady days of their new marriage and their new life together, Honora and Sexton throw themselves into redecorating the house. When the owner of the house offers to sell it to them, they jump at the chance even though it will be a financial stretch. Their timing couldn't be worse. Within months, the stock market crashes, and their life changes completely when Sexton is forced to take a brutal, low-paying job in the local mill. In contrast to the riveting story lines of Shreve's previous titles, the plot is a bit thinner here. Yet the characters are compelling, especially the hard-living, smart-mouthed socialite Vivian and the reticent union activist McDermott. Even as Shreve stays resolutely on the surface of her story, readers will respond to her well-crafted prose. Fine entertainment. Joanne Wilkinson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Anita Shreve is the author of many acclaimed novels, including Resistance, The Weight of Water, Fortune's Rocks, The Last Time They Met, and the international bestseller The Pilot's Wife, which was a selection of Oprah's Book Club. She lives in New England.