During a sailing class, four teenagers meet. Jessie Schaffer is fourteen, an intelligent and solitary girl, who dreams of becoming a writer. When she sees nineteen-year-old Lindsay Ames, the instructor, standing on a dock, sunlight illuminating her blond hair and blue eyes, Jessie falls in love but is too afraid of her feelings and what they mean.
In an attempt to reassure herself she is “normal,” Jessie becomes involved with two boys in the class: Kenny Crenshaw, also fourteen, a darkly handsome and flirtatious guy, and Calvin Brayburn, a year younger, who will be in their freshman class because he’s academi- cally brilliant. On the first day of sailing, Cal is smitten with Jessie, though he is hindered by shyness. As the romantic relationships take unexpected twists, Jessie, Lindsay, Calvin, and Kenny relate their individual stories, their hopes, fears, and longings, all the while being buffeted by intense pressures. Set in coastal New Jersey, the plot roams from its beautiful rivers to lush scenes in St. Thomas and Viet- nam’s jungles during the war.
Although Turnabout takes place between 1964 and 1970, the issues are still relevant: social isolation and loneliness, family friction, sexual pressure and dating, class differences, the lure of alcohol and drugs, war and post- traumatic stress, bigotry and prejudice, confusion about sexual orientation, and the challenge of finding a path to one’s dreams.
The title relates to the Turnabout sailboat used in the class and to the dramatic turnabouts of each character as he/she navigates these treacherous teenage years.
Available from NineStar Press: https://ninestarpress.com/ Amazon, B & N, and bookstores
Laury A. Egan is the author of The Outcast Oracle, a Kirkus Review “Best Book of 2013,” A Bittersweet Tale, Jenny Kidd, The Ungodly Hour, Fabulous! An Opera Buffa, and Fog and Other Stories and four volumes of poetry: Snow, Shadows, a Stranger; Beneath the Lion’s Paw; The Sea & Beyond; and Presence & Absence. www.lauryaegan.com
