About this episode
Eileen O’Malley’s brother Lenny is killed in Vietnam while she’s a sophomore in college. Overnight her life changes. She drops out, moves home to Charleston, and takes a job in the men’s department of a local shop to help pay the bills. Then a handsome naval officer asks her advice about a pair of trousers.
Next thing she knows, she’s a young bride on La Maddalena, a small Mediterranean island off the coast of Sardinia where the US Navy keeps its submarines. When Italian activists, nuclear scientists and a handsome journalist start warning her about contamination in the water, Eileen has to question everything she thought she knew.
Rachel Beanland’s third novel is a coming of age story about a young woman working out who she is inside a marriage, a military community, and a country, all three of which expect her to toe the line.
In this episode of Elena Meets the Author, Rachel talks about the childhood years she spent on La Maddalena, the 2019 return visit that sparked the book, and her mother’s detailed letters home that gave her the 1970s period detail. We talk about the island as a locked room, Eileen’s retrospective second person narration, the dual meaning of the title, and the research she did with Navy veterans and their wives.
Rachel Beanland is also the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and The House Is on Fire.