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Undertow
In the 1950s the islanders' battle is with the savage forces of poverty, disease and religious constraint. Terrible things happen - rape, incest, bestiality - and yet somehow compassion, love and generosity of spirit manage to continue. Brooding over it all is the elemental figure of Big Bucko, symbolic of all that is brutal and disruptive.
Four decades later, the island is facing other the Spanish fishing boats which threaten the livelihood of the trawlermen, the encroachment of tourism and the gradual disintegration of community. But still the people strive to transcend their common legacy of suffering, to reach for love and a new connectedness.
Soon past and present converge, as the secrets of the generations are disentangled and a complex, disturbing pattern is at last revealed.
Four decades later, the island is facing other the Spanish fishing boats which threaten the livelihood of the trawlermen, the encroachment of tourism and the gradual disintegration of community. But still the people strive to transcend their common legacy of suffering, to reach for love and a new connectedness.
Soon past and present converge, as the secrets of the generations are disentangled and a complex, disturbing pattern is at last revealed.
314 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2003
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