The Cottage Industry

by Edward McSweegan

David Enders, pilot for the French Army during the Great War, returns to Connecticut after wandering post-war France with a condition similar to shell-shocked men from the trenches. At home he must 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 building houses in Old Lyme, 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. Enders falls in love with one of those artists, but encircled by suffocating customs, illiberal laws, and petty criminals, they’re looking for an escape.

291 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 5, 2024

About the author

My debut historical novel, Shadow of the Moon, was published by Wild Rose Press (WRP) in March 2023. My second novel, The Fever Hut, was published by Fireship Press in February 2024, and a third novel, The Cottage Industry, was published by WRP in June 2024.

Reviews

[Carol Orme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent story about a man rediscovering himself after the Great War. I learned about New England area and intertwined through the story, what it may have been during and after a War. Great ending!