San Miguel
A Novel
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A lyrical and intimate novel following two families as they struggle to heal, from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain
“Boyle portrays the heartbreaking toll San Miguel takes on these couples in a novel as beguiling as the island itself.”—O, The Oprah Magazine
Just off the coast of Southern California, two families—one in the late 1880s and one in the 1930s—come to desolate, windswept San Miguel Island in search of self-reliance, freedom, and a new start in their lives.
In failing health, Marantha Waters arrives with her husband, a stubborn Civil War veteran who plans to take over the island’s sheep ranch. Some forty years later, Elise Lester settles the island with her husband, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. Both Marantha and Elise strive to help their husbands pursue their dreams but must themselves grapple with the more nebulous hardships of raising a family in brutal isolation.
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On New Year's Day 1888, the ailing Marantha Waters sails across San Francisco Bay to remote San Miguel Island with her second husband and adopted daughter in hopes that the fresh air will restore her health. Marantha and her family, city folk by nature, risk the last of her inheritance on a farm lashed by wind and rain; removed from the pleasant distractions of late Victorian society and thrust into primitive living conditions, the Waters find themselves left with little to do but discover the strengths and weaknesses in themselves and in each other. Decades later during the Depression, Elise and Herbie Lester take over the farm and undergo their own transformations. Ripe with exhaustively researched period detail, Boyle's epic saga of struggle, loss, and resilience (after When the Killing's Done) tackles Pacific pioneer history with literary verve. The author subtly interweaves the fates of Native Americans, Irish immigrants, Spanish and Italian migrant workers, and Chinese fishermen into the Waters' and the Lesters' lives, but the novel is primarily a history of the land itself, unchanging despite its various visitors and residents, and as beautiful, imperfect, and unrelenting as Boyle's characters.
