Monterey Bay
A Novel
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4.0 • 18 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A beautiful debut set around the creation of the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium--and the last days of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row
In 1940, fifteen year-old Margot Fiske arrives on the shores of Monterey Bay with her eccentric entrepreneur father. Margot has been her father's apprentice all over the world, until an accident in Monterey's tide pools drives them apart and plunges her head-first into the mayhem of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row.
Steinbeck is hiding out from his burgeoning fame at the raucous lab of Ed Ricketts, the biologist known as Doc in Cannery Row. Ricketts, a charismatic bohemian, quickly becomes the object of Margot's fascination. Despite Steinbeck's protests and her father's misgivings, she wrangles a job as Ricketts's sketch artist and begins drawing the strange and wonderful sea creatures he pulls from the waters of the bay.
Unbeknownst to Margot, her father is also working with Ricketts. He is soliciting the biologist's advice on his most ambitious and controversial project to date: the transformation of the Row's largest cannery into an aquarium. When Margot begins an affair with Ricketts, she sets in motion a chain of events that will affect not just the two of them, but the future of Monterey as well.
Alternating between past and present, Monterey Bay explores histories both imagined and actual to create an unforgettable portrait of an exceptional woman, a world-famous aquarium, and the beloved town they both call home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of John Steinbeck and his Cannery Row stories will delight in this novel, which takes place in Monterey, Calif., in 1940. While looking at the sea life in a tide pool, 15-year-old Margot Fiske falls and hits her head. She is rescued by marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who sews up the cut in her forehead, and shortly thereafter they begin having an affair. Margot moved to Monterey with her entrepreneur father, Anders Fiske, who takes over one of the canneries on the row, but runs it his own way, much to the chagrin of Giana Agnelli, head of the most powerful family on the peninsula. Margot gets a job sketching Ricketts's marine subjects and makes money on the side drawing pornographic images that are then sold by Giana's son, Tino. Margot gets to know Steinbeck, Ricketts's benefactor, who is hiding out from Hollywood and his wife, Carol. But for these characters, America's entry into World War II and the publication of Cannery Row will change life in Monterey forever. Hatton, in her fist novel, takes up a formidable challenge for herself, setting her story in one of American literature's most famous locations. She does an excellent job of recreating the Cannery Row that no longer exists, honoring the memory of Steinbeck and Ricketts (the real-life inspiration for Cannery Row's Doc) and all the workers who once toiled there, as seen through the eyes of a precocious teenage heroine.
