"Seriously good. . . . Deep and rich." —  Los Angeles Times From the critically acclaimed author of Happy All the Time and Home Cooking , a insightful and witty tale of a woman struggling to overcome her grief and find her future When Sam Bax, a charming daredevil of a Boston lawyer, sails his boat into a storm off the coast of Maine, Elizabeth "Olly" Bax, his wife, is widowed at twenty-seven. With no pretense of courage, and a vague dislike for what she feels is the cheap availability of her emotions, Olly grieves the husband she probably would have divorced, while coping with the warmth and awkwardness of family trying (and failing) to distract her from their own grief. As she learns to rethink her life and her love, she becomes close to Sam's brother, Patrick—and begins to realize Sam's recklessness and passion may not be as foreign to her as she thought.   Laurie Colwin depicts Olly—the “More Life Widow of the More Life Kid”—with humor, compassion, and a decided lack of sentimentality, creating a real heroine who tries to remain true to her heart while keeping her head. "Colwin has written this spirited, insightful, often funny book with a keen sense of understatement that is extraordinarily powerful and moving." - Cleveland Plain Dealer "Engaging, rapid, and filled with witty and exciting imagery." - Houston Chronicle "A seriously good book. Deep and rich." - Los Angeles Times “Technique may be learned, but art is a matter of talent, a commodity parceled out by providence with breath-taking arbitrariness. . . . [ Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object ] left me in no doubt that its author is one of the golden few who can't, apparently, put a foot wrong.” - Cosmopolitan “Complex, adventurous, and exciting.” - Larry McMurtry in the Washington Post “I would love. . . to start a Colwin renaissance.” - Elin Hilderbrand, on NPR’s “All Things Considered” Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels: Happy All the Time ; Family Happiness ; Goodbye Without Leaving ; Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object ; and A Big Storm Knocked It Over ; three collections of short stories: Passion and Affect , Another Marvelous Thing , and The Lone Pilgrim ; and two collections of essays: Home Cooking and More Home Cooking . She died in 1992. Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object By Colwin, Laurie Perennial Copyright © 2004 Laurie Colwin All right reserved. ISBN: 0060958960 Chapter One My husband died sailing off the coast of Maine, leaving me a widow at the age of twenty-seven. This was the time when a lot of girls were losing their husbands to the air war or the ground war; I lost my husband to recklessness, to a freak storm and a flimsy boat. I had no bitter, apologetic telegram to inform me, no grieving soldier at my door with the unsent letter, watch, and kit, no child to console. His name was Sam Bax, and no one ever stopped him from anything. His brother Patrick and I watched him sail out of Little Crab Harbor when he knew there were storm warnings. We passed the binoculars back and forth, but Patrick got the last full glimpse of him. When he passed the heavy glasses over to me, there was a bright white dot on the horizon, but it might have been a buoy and not the last of Sam's sail. I remember thinking at the time that Sam acted out every wild impulse Patrick had ever entertained and fought down. Sam was thirty, and Patrick thirty-two, the oldest and staidest of youthful lawyers. He executed his violence on the tennis court, and the first time I met him -- before Sam and I were married -- he and Sam got drunk after dinner and played a vicious game of midnight tennis that ended with Sam's wrist and ankle taped, and Patrick with a dent in his head where he had collided with the racket Sam hurled at him. And that was pretty much the outlet for Patrick Bax. He had squashed his recklessness down to an ironic sort of caution that was a slap in his own face. Sam, on the other hand, during our five years together, broke his collarbone when a skittish horse threw him in front of a hurdle, and Sam, who had never jumped, narrowly missed breaking his back and smashing his skull. He broke his right leg skiing, and on a rock climb he cut his shoulder, so deep that, when they carried him down, he was bright gray, unconscious, and you could see bone beneath the wound. I was used to sharing my bed with plaster, tape, and ace bandages. It wasn't athletics, although the Bax boys were athletic in a well-rounded, general way. It wasn't sport at all. If there had been no sports, they would have invented something much more dangerous. They were natural front-line soldiers, but both of them beat the draft by staying where their upbringing dictated they stay'in school'and they graduated as lawyers like their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before them. The Baxes summered at Little Crab Harbor, a bleak enclave with a beach composed of lunar-looking rock. From the shore you could see, set on a