Book People favorite Rachel Beanland returns with her most captivating novel yet The Half Life.
Rachel will be in conversation with Rachel McRady, author of Sunseekers.
Thursday, September 10th at 6PM.
From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on a remote Italian island about a navy wife’s reckoning with
power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age.
When twenty-three-year-old Eileen O’Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn’t expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen’s got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender.
In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of navy wives who are hell-bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island—taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones—she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from.
Still, it doesn’t take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the U.S. government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the ... view more »
Book People favorite Rachel Beanland returns with her most captivating novel yet The Half Life.
Rachel will be in conversation with Rachel McRady, author of Sunseekers.
Thursday, September 10th at 6PM.
From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on a remote Italian island about a navy wife’s reckoning with
power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age.
When twenty-three-year-old Eileen O’Malley meets charismatic naval officer Paul Archer in a Charleston department store, she doesn’t expect to fall so hard, so fast. But Paul is funny and ambitious, and soon, Eileen’s got a ring on her finger and is following him to the tiny, sun-drenched Mediterranean island of La Maddalena, where Paul will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender.
In La Maddalena, Eileen joins a makeshift community of navy wives who are hell-bent on making the island feel a little more like home. But for Eileen, whose brother died in Vietnam, home is a loaded word, and as she settles into life on the island—taking Italian lessons and learning to make culurgiones—she begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from.
Still, it doesn’t take long for Eileen to be confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad. The decision to send nuclear-powered subs into the La Maddalena Archipelago was a contentious one, and the U.S. government is doing whatever it can to ensure that the island—not to mention all of Italy—doesn’t go communist in the next election.
When Italian activists and scientists begin to sound the alarm about possible nuclear contamination in the water, the island erupts in a series of protests, made worse by the ongoing mishaps of the U.S. Navy. Soon, Eileen’s marriage falters and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets—and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she’s been handed.
Atmospheric, sexy, and quietly defiant, The Half Life is a story of love, complicity, and awakening—of one woman forced to choose between loyalty to her husband and country and to the Italian locals who show her the high cost of American exceptionalism.
Rachel Beanland is the author of The House Is on Fire and Florence Adler Swims Forever, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction.
She is a graduate of the University of South Carolina and earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University.
She lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia.
Rachel McRady is an Emmy-award winning journalist whose work has appeared in People magazine, Entertainment Tonight, Time magazine, The Washington Post, E! News, Us Weekly, and more.
Her debut novel, Sun Seekers, was featured on Good Morning America, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, and won the Zibby Award for Best Family Drama of 2024.
Her next novel, Let’s Do This Again Soon, will be released in May 2027.
Rachel lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband, Caleb, and daughters, Iona and Isla.
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