A Sound Like Thunder Book

Set in the small gulf town of Fairhope, Alabama, this lyrical coming-of-age tale begins in the winter of 1941. Named for his father’s drowned Labrador retriever, Rove is a strong-shouldered and self-reliant sixteen-year-old, an uneven match for his volatile father, Captain Dominus MacNee. Though he sometimes wishes the whiskey-soaked man would be lost at sea, Rove himself is in danger of sinking in the troubled waters of his home life.

Navigating between memoir and memory, past and present, Rove reflects upon the people and pursuits that have influenced his life: his passion for fishing, his much-loved grandmother, and Anna Pearl Anderson, “the prettiest girl on the Eastern shore,” who ignites in Rove the first flickers of romance. Yet his greatest treasure, perhaps, is his 25-foot sloop, the Sea Bird. Given to him as a gift, the Sea Bird brings with it both the possibility of salvation and the threat of disaster. As Rove dreams of escaping his tumultuous surroundings, it becomes apparent that he can never truly shake the hold of his seaside home unless he confronts, head on, a startling truth.

Publishers Weekly

To tell a classic, if overwrought bildungsroman complete with teenage boy, quiet younger brother, alcoholic father, possibly cheating mother and a boat Brewer returns to Fairhope, Ala., the setting of his 2005 debut, The Poet of Tolstoy Park. As WWII rages in Europe (Pearl Harbor is still a sleepy navy outpost), 16-year-old Rove MacNee's Granny Wooten, who always gave him "the right book at the right time," dies. On the day of her funeral, Rove witnesses his violent, alcoholic father, ship captain Dominus MacNee, threatening his German neighbor, Josef Unruh, with a knife. Soon, Dominus, a locally notorious philanderer, is in jail on attempted murder charges, leaving Rove to figure out whether his mother, Lillian, is having an affair with Josef. As Rove tumbles out of childhood, Josef offers him a fixer-upper boat, and Rove goes to live on it, taking comfort in his family's tradition of fishing, sailing and living on the sea. Though the story can buckle beneath the weight of its sentimentality, Brewer's fans will enjoy his graceful crafting of characters and the budding romance between Rove and Anna Pearl, a schoolmate with a "fire-bearing spirit." (On sale Aug. 1) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.