The Sea View Has Me Again

The action of Toby Olson’s PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel Seaview sweeps eastward, following three men and two women across a wasted American continent to an apocalyptic confrontation on Cape Cod. Melinda hopes to reach the seaside where she was born before she dies of cancer. Allen, her husband, earns their way back by golf hustling, working the links en route. Outside of Tucson, the two meet up with a Pima Indian also headed toward the Cape to help a distant relative who has claims on a golf course there that is laid out on tribal grounds. Throughout the journey, Allen knows he is being stalked by a former friend, Richard, a drug-pusher whom he has crossed and who is now determined to murder him. The tortured lives of Richard and his wife Gerry stand as a dream of what might have become of Allen and Melinda had things been otherwise. The lines that draw these people together converge at Seaview Links, and on the mad battlefield that this golf course becomes, the novel reaches its complex ending. Seaview’s vibrant language and fateful plot make this study of an America on the edge an unforgettable read.