The Half Life

From the author of Florence Adler Swims Forever and The House Is on Fire, a novel set on an Italian island about a navy wife’s reckoning with power, love, and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age. A romantic maelstrom of struggle, politics, and perseverance. —Richmond Magazine“A captivating, whip-smart novel about love, loyalty, and a woman torn between two lives. I utterly adored it.” —Clare Leslie Hall, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Country 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...