VIGIL HARBOR

The latest novel by the New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning THREE JUNES (2002).

A dozen years from now, in a prosperous seaside town north of Boston, the inhabitants have so far escaped the worst effects of climate change, an international surge in terrorist acts, and a growing survivalist movement. But over the course of a week, the arrival of two visitors with different hidden agendas puts several lives in danger and brings darker elements of the outside world into a community that has foolishly considered itself a safe haven. Eight characters tell the story as it unfolds: Brecht, a young man recovering from a traumatic emotional experience; his parents, Austin and Miriam (Austin a successful and locally beloved architect); Mike, a marine biologist whose wife has just left him for another man; Margo, a retired English teacher; Egon, Mike's grown son, who is struggling to succeed as an actor in New York; Connie, a home-schooling mother married to a Guatemalan immigrant who works with Austin; and Petra, an outsider who comes to Vigil Harbor intent on solving a mystery about a lost love from her past. As in all of Julia Glass' novels, the past of each character and the town folds and intertwines with the present, bringing these people together in a tightening web of relationships. Readers of A WIDOWER'S TALE will recognize the town where that novel endsto which Percy Darling moved to reshape his lifeas well as Celestino, who remained there, built his own business, married and had a child. JULIA GLASS is the author of six previous books of fiction, including the best-selling Three Junes, winner of the National Book Award, and I See You Everywhere, winner of Binghamton University's John Gardner Fiction Book Award. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Glass is a Senior Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College. She lives with her family north of Boston.