Half Life

When twenty-three-year-old Eileen O`Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn`t expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen`s got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender. In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of navy wives who are hell-bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island-taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones-she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from. Still, it doesn`t take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the U.S. government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the island-not to mention all of Italy-doesn`t go communist in the next election. When Italian activists and scientists begin to sound the alarm about possible nuclear contamination in the water, the island erupts in a series of protests, made worse by the ongoing mishaps of the U.S. Navy. Soon, Eileen`s marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets-and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she`s been handed. Atmospheric, sexy, and quietly defiant, The Half Life is a story of love, complicity, and awakening-of one woman forced to choose between loyalty to her husband and country and to the Italian locals who show her the high cost of American exceptionalism.