Shining Sea

by Anne Korkeakivi

A novel about the complicated world of a family in California over years to come, after the sudden death of the father.
Opening in 1962 with the fatal heart attack of forty-three-year-old Michael Gannon, a WWII veteran and former POW in the Pacific, SHINING SEA plunges into the turbulent lives of his widow and kids over subsequent decades, crisscrossing from the beaches of southern California to the Woodstock rock festival, London’s gritty nightlife in the eighties to Scotland’s remote Inner Hebrides islands, the dry heat of Arizona desert to the fertile farmland of Massachusetts. Beautifully rendered and profoundly moving, SHINING SEA by Anne Korkeakivi is a family story, about the ripple effects of war, the passing down of memory, and the power of the ideal of heroism to lead us astray but also to keep us afloat.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Family, Literary Fiction, Drama, Contemporary, War

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 9, 2016

About the author

Anne Korkeakivi is the author of the novels AN UNEXPECTED GUEST (2012) and SHINING SEA (2016), from Little, Brown. Her short fiction and nonfiction have been published by The Atlantic, TIME, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Times (UK), Travel & Leisure, Ms., AD, the Village Voice, The Missouri Review, The Yale Review, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Millions, Lit Hub, and many other periodicals in the US, UK, and online, and she is a fellow of Yaddo and Hawthornden. A mother of two and native New Yorker, Anne currently lives in Switzerland where her husband is a human rights lawyer. Past homes include France, Finland, California, and New England, all of which show up in her fiction.

Find her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/anne_korkea....

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

"They drive past the Woolworth's and turn right". Two girls stand on a street corner, waiting for the light to change, laughing. One, in a short pink skirt, holds a tiny white dog in her arms. She was once a girl like that, not in a short skirt but in a freshly ironed yellow dress, passing out magazines to the returning soldiers, dreaming – – without for a second actually imagining – – that her future husband might be among them. And then there Michael was, propped up in a hospital bed, gaunt but so calm, so handsome".
"This life of hers as a grown woman happened, bang, just like that".

And then -- just like that, bang, life changed in a matter of seconds.

Loved - loved -loved reading this novel. Anne Korkeakivi has such effortless control over the narrative. Everything feels organic. The story moves quickly -evolving through time. We follow a family intricately. One son struggles desperately. All of the characters lives have been shaped by the death of Michael.
This book will give you food for thought about the way we are and the way we are not.

I was totally absorbed into the life of the main characters...and this is one of the few books which needs 'no editing'. It's the perfect length...intimate storytelling- comfort reading - because you feel 'included'.

I had considered writing a longer detailed review... But mostly I want to share how wonderful this novel is.
I liked it! I loved it! You've a variety of characters to chew your taffy with - You'll reminisce with some history... Woodstock, "Families For Peace. Stop the Vietnam War"...marriages, grandchildren, holidays, social changes... etc. We've heard these themes before... so just saying what this book is about is not enough. ITS THE FEELING THAT IS SPOT ON!!!
Terrific family saga of sorts - with 'less' saga - about 200- less pages than most family saga stories...a huge benefit to this novel!!!

I'd recommend this book to 'anyone' without hesitation! Gorgeous book cover- with lovely colors chosen, to boot!

Thank You Little Brown and Company, Netgalley, and Anne Korkeakivi

[Angela M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is about a loving family dealing with grief, facing the impact of that grief and loss of a loved one and facing how their memories and early perceptions affect them. These are characters who come across as real with their imperfections because who among us is perfect? Michael , Barbara and their children Patty Ann, Luke, Mike Jr., Francis and Sissy - I loved them all even though not always liking things they did. When I finished this my first response was that this was an ordinary story about a family experiencing life - the things that happened to a lot of ordinary people. After I thought about it more I decided it really was more than that because the author has done an extraordinary thing. In a book that is not very lengthy, she has covered a time span from 1962 to 2015 and for me it was a walk through times I remember , having grown up during them - race riots , Vietnam, Woodstock - all felt so familiar to me . This is the story of this family over multiple generations with their ups and downs, with their family bond and love remaining constant, even with distances , both emotional and in miles. I'm not going to spend any time talking about the plot but will say that it's definitely worth reading. Moved from 3 stars to 4.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Barbara met Michael he was in a rehabilitation hospital recovering from his internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. She was a young volunteer, doing her part by delivering magazines and newspapers to the recovering soldiers. Although ten years older than she, they fall in love, marry, and now with a fifth child on the way, it all ends in a heartbeat.

A book that does a fantastic job portraying time and place. The beginning, very much the fifties, smoking while pregnant, cocktails, strong sense of family. Only now this family is rudderless and this is what happens to them. The sixties, Vietnam War, protests, dodging the draft and one giant acid trip at Woodstock. Frances, only nine when his father dies, will spend the next twenty years trying to find a place. Leaving one situation after another, one relationship after another until a sea voyage will help define his future, albeit a tragic story in itself. Very much the story, alternately told by Barbara and Frances. We follow the rest of the family through their stories and I loved them both for opposite, reasons. Barbara, a strong woman, a survivor, and this family has been seriously affected by the war, the war has token more than one can bear, yet she takes everything in stride, trying to carry on. Frances is the lost son, has no idea what to do, where to go, always feeling out of place. As a mother my heart goes out to him.

A novel about the dividing and the sorrows of war on one family. Family itself, the things that separate and the things that being them back together. Of finding forgiveness for oneself and for others. A quiet story, a simple story, a very easy story to relate to and one poignantly told. I quite felt for this family and loved the way the story was told, seeing the different perspectives and how different family members reacted to the same circumstances. Loved the time period details, very well done but mostly just took this family to heart, flaws and all. They felt real.

ARC from publisher.

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

“A crowd of sparrows flies up, peppering the California sky overhead. His heart constricts, and Michael Gannon thinks: Today is the day I am going to die.”

It’s Good Friday April 20, 1962, Luke, his son, is there helping him paint the house. Just a bit more touching up and they’ll be done.

“His heart squeezes; his fingers and jaw stiffen. ‘You’ll be all right, corpsman,’ the doctor at Letterman told him, signing his release sixteen years ago. There were more than seventy thousand of them moving through Letterman Army Hospital in Frisco that year. If he could make it through the Bataan march, he can make it through this.

But right now, he wants to finish painting the house with the boys. Just last December he paid off the mortgage.

Tomorrow the painting will be done, the children will be getting the Easter eggs ready, and he can set up the crib before the baby comes, have everything ready. This is his plan.

He begins to drift off, remembering the first time he saw her, Barbara. She was nineteen years old and wearing a yellow dress. She tells him how her only brother fell on D-day and was buried in Normandy. She tells him “My mother’s family is French. So at least in a way he’s home.” He knows in that moment that she is a girl who will remain optimistic in the face of whatever life throws her way, and he falls fast and hard. Ten days later, they were getting married.

But now, Michael is paused outside their house, the painting momentarily, and Barbara is handing him a glass of lemonade, he feels the icy cold of the glass, lets it slide down his throat, so cold that it sends a river of chills through his veins. A moment. A pause, and then his world begins to dim, He feels the contact as his head meets the grassy lawn.

Easter follows, and soon after the youngest is born, a girl. And not too many years down the road are Vietnam and Woodstock. Her children grow up, move out, have their own lives, some eventually have their own children. Grandchildren grow, and the days spin by, as do the years and suddenly entire lifetimes and then some has passed.

This wonderful family saga moves quickly, but not rushed, everything flows, and every part of the story feels necessary for that person’s growth, for the story to move naturally to the next phase.

Grief is a presence, but not an overwhelming one, while sad things happen – as in life – this book is more about how each event in life triggers a reaction, an action, an event, emotions, and how in turn those choices, those actions do so as well, until a lifetime is formed out of all the choices we make, our family makes.

Pub Date: 09 Aug 2016

Many thanks for the ARC provided to Little, Brown and Company, NetGalley and author Anne Korkeakivi

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shining Sea is lovely, unassuming, and graceful. The book itself is a mere 275 pages and yet my feeling upon finishing it is that I might have just read a 400 page sweeping family chronicle. Anne Korkeakivi delivers this tale as glimpses of life from Barbara Gannon and her son Francis’s perspectives across decades. It is brief but mighty.

What’s interesting to me is that even though I don’t have children of my own (aside from my two giant furry babies), I really connected with this story. It just feels like a reminder that families are often imperfect and messy, tragedy does not discriminate, and life does not always go how we once imagined it might. Where we end up is the result of all those things that have happened along the way. In her life Barbara witnesses war, pain, death, birth, joy and love. In the end, across years and distances, her love for her children endures.

Don’t look for a strong plot in this one but enjoy being pulled into the tide of the Gannon family.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the very definition of a family saga. It opens in 1962 with the death of Michael, father to four (soon to be five) children and husband to Barbara. Michael was a soldier and prisoner of war in WWII. The storyline covers the lives of the family members over the course of the next fifty-plus years. It is told primarily from the perspective of Barbara and youngest son, Francis, the wanderer. The storyline follows the major events of the time period (Woodstock, Vietnam War) and how they impact the characters.

It is a story of moving forward in the face of grief, and of how decisions and random occurrences change the direction of one’s life. It tells of the lingering impact of wars. It may have worked better with fewer characters – not sure all those children were necessary. The beginning is strong and there are several vivid scenes, such as the boating expedition in the Irish Sea. The author covers many years in a relatively short book, which unfortunately means it does not flow very well.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life doesn't always go the way we want it to. Dear loved ones die and others can disappoint us by their choices and mistakes they make. And, we can disappoint others, as well. Life's a crapshoot, any way you play it. In Anne Korkeakivi's marvelous new novel, "Shining Sea", her portrait of a family in change, through the early 1960's to today, resounds brilliantly on the ups and downs of the Gannon/McCloskey family.

The story centers on Barbara Gannon and is told in chapters centering on different characters in her family, each at a different date in time. The chapters are almost short stories themselves, particularly the long one about Francis Gannon and a boat trip he took from Scotland to Ireland. It was to change his life, but he - one of Barbara and Michael Gannon's five children - had had his life made difficult by the deaths of his father, brother, and best friend. The story of his father's death, after having survived the Bataan Death March and while practicing medicine in Los Angeles and raising a family, is the beginning of the book. The plot - and the beautifully drawn characters - go out like ripples from that early death. Dr Michael Gannon's family all cope with his death in different ways and they can't seem to comfort each other. The children - from the oldest at 15 at the time of her father's death to the youngest, not yet born - are adrift. As a picture of the turbulent counter-culture of the 1960's and the Vietnam War to today, the Gannon children and grandchildren touch many of the events that are snapshots of the times.

Anne Korteakivi's novel is not long. It is fewer than 300 pages, but there's not a wasted scene or unsketched character. It's almost as good as another contemporary novel, "Christodoro" by Tim Murphy, which also beautifully covers the same time period. Both are family sagas and both are well worth reading.

[Jenny Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sweeping novel of eloquence and grace. There is something beautifully sea-like in the ebb and flow of Ms. Korkeakivi's dual narratives, which circle in and around each other and carry us ever farther into the hearts of these characters and the story of an American family. It seems incredible to me that a multi-generational saga can fit within this relatively slim volume and still feel rich and satisfying. There were moments when I wished the novel would expand farther, following each of the Gannon children and all the lives they touch, a narrative rippling exponentially outward--and yet even this longing feels purposeful, a bittersweet reflection of life itself. This is the first novel of Ms. Korkeakivi's that I've read, and it won't be the last.

[Marina Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, poignant vignettes and great sense of character, melodic and yet very precise language. A sweeping family saga over many years, but it nevertheless remains subtle, understated and avoids sentimentality. Just lovely!

[Dale Harcombe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Giving up on this. It started out okay and then I found the longer it went, the less keen I was to keep reading. I had no interest in the characters, especially the chapters from Francis. The shifts in time always seemed like too big a jump and made it feel choppy. Maybe other people will enjoy this story of a family but it was not for me. I was bored and so I did not finish it.

[Susan McBeth (Adventures by the Book) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved, loved, loved this book that traces the lives of a SoCal family over three generations and how war affected them all, either directly or indirectly. Korkeakivi has a gift for exquisite prose, a unique voice, and a mesmerizing ability to capture the way our lives are intertwined in so many complex ways. I'm so excited to have discovered a talented writer whom I had never before read. Highly recommend!

[Mary Lins · Rating 4 out of 5]

​"All her life, she's wanted to believe in the truth of order. But life is more like a crazy juggernaut of possibilities."
This is what Barbara Gannon thinks about life in Anne Koreakivi's novel, "Shining Sea", as she looks back at her family over the decades.

"Shining Sea" can be categorized as a historical novel revolving around one family from 1962 to 2015. It touches on all the major issues of those years, particularly the Vietnam War. The story is told from the points of view of Barbara, the matriarch of the family of five: three boys and two girls, and from the perspective of her youngest son, Francis. Like most of us, Barbara's life has not turned out the way she planned or wanted, and for most of her life she continually wonders "if only" something pivotal that happened in 1962 hadn't happened. She muses: "Why can't life just run like minnows through one's fingers, moving fast but bright and tickling? Why does it have to be so full of darkness and shadows?"

But we know that life IS full of shadows, and it's pointless to mourn the life you thought you would have.

"Shining Sea" was fast-paced, beautifully written, and it held my interest. For a similar look at one family across the years I also recommend Jane Smiley's Last Hundred Years Trilogy, starting with "Some Luck".

[R Z · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this for free in a goodreads giveaway.

The beginning of this was good, and then, I don't know, Barbara became such an annoying, judgmental character— and we didn't even get anything about her life until the end, and that hardly counted for anything. The best aspect of the novel is when Francis takes a turn to become the focused on character, but those moments were, alas, all too brief to further Barbara's narrative (which seems to be solely about her children, what they're doing wrong, what she did right, and how could they think things especially with their father and the war and his sacrifice and so on. Which I also thought would be addressed, the staunch belief that anything remotely resembling anti-military— like scoffing at a game about peace and getting bitter that a Japanese student graduated from college. In New York. In the 90s— is inherently bad, but nah.)

I think I would have enjoyed this a lot more had the focus on the children actually been from their own perspectives, as opposed to Barbara's, if only due to the fact that she seems to be the definition of an unreliable narrator, and not even in a way that makes it still interesting; I just wanted to read the story with other bias, I suppose, because Barbara has such a strong hold on her point. Also, I definitely thought it was going to flashback to WWII and them being young, but apparently I was really, really wrong about that.

Just didn't do anything for me, I guess.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continuing on this random female author kick and was pleasantly surprised by this novel. The narrative covers decades in the lives of one family as it is indelibly affected by major global events (war) and major private events. It has love, redemption, second and third chances and all those things that can make an outwardly ordinary life seem large, important and full of grace. It's a small and quiet story, but it's so well done, with the characters rendered so vividly and with such kindness, that it ends up being a very engaging and charming read. One of the characters toward the end says it's a story of an American family and it really is the sort of slice of life Americana sort of thing, only the high end of as it were, not the bleak noir struggles, in fact never bleak, there is always an underling beauty, it's always hopeful, which in itself is something of a miracle. Very enjoyable read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

[Celia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book in an author give-away and oh, what a gold medal prize it was.

This is a beautiful family saga covering many events in the family's life over the years 1962 to 2015.

I don't think I could do a better review than the description provided by Amazon:

An arresting and absorbing novel that spans decades, drawing us into the turbulent lives of a family in Southern California after the sudden death of the father.

Beginning in 1962 with a shocking loss, Shining Sea quickly pulls us into the lives of forty-three -year-old Michael Gannon's widow and offspring. Brilliantly described and utterly alive on the page, the Gannon clan find themselves charting paths they never anticipated, for decades to come. Told with a cinematic sweep, Shining Sea transports us from World War II to the present day, crisscrossing from the beaches of Southern California to the Woodstock rock festival, from London's gritty nightlife in the eighties to Scotland's remote Inner Hebrides, from the dry heat of Arizona to the fertile farmland of Massachusetts.

Epic, tender, and beautifully rendered, Shining Sea is the portrait of an American family-a profound depiction of the ripple effects of war, the passing down of memory, the making of myth, and the power of the ideal of heroism to lead us astray but sometimes also to keep us afloat.

I truly did love this book and this family. The book is available for loan to anyone who would like to share the beauty of this book.

[Imi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars? The beginning to this was utterly fantastic, such an emotional gut punch, but unfortunately I found myself losing interest later on. The shifts in time felt kind of choppy and Francis' chapters in particular felt off kilter from the rest of the book. Still there are some really poignant scenes that'll definitely stay with me... I think I could have loved this book if it was all from Barbara's perspective (after the beginning of course).

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shining Sea by Anne Korkeavivi starts out in 1962 with the death of 43 year-old Michael Gannon while he is painting the outside of his house a lemon yellow for his wife Barbara. Barbara is pregnant with their fifth child, a girl, at the time of her husband's death which she believes was caused by his years as a Prisoner of War and his emotional and physical injuries on the battlefield. Barbara is left to cope alone, a woman with no particular skills but a strong love of family and a desire to move ahead at any cost.

The children are particularly interesting. Patty Anne is a lost soul, a teenager right out of high school when she marries her ne'er do well boyfriend in order to keep him out of the war in Vietnam. Michael, Jr., follows in his father's footsteps and becomes a physician. Francis, the lost boy, descends into anomie after the death of his best friend Eugene. He separates from his family and for some time no one knows where he is as he travels throughout the globe.

This is primarily the story of Barbara and Francis as they try to find themselves after the traumatic loss of their husband/father. Barbara settles into a 'comfortable' marriage with a good man and Francis tries to find himself by bedding down one woman after another.

While I found this family saga entertaining, there was enough missing that it didn't grab me fully. The reader travels from the sixties to the present as the Gannon family faces its trials and tribulations. As someone who lived through the sixties and remembers it, I found the narrative about that era to be evocative but not completely accurate. If you want to read a literary novel that is dramatic and interesting, this may be the right choice.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, my goodness, I could not put this book down! Michael and Barbara meet while he is recovering from his experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese during WWII. They have a seemingly ordinary life, until tragedy strikes their young family. This experience affects each member of the family in different ways, and each takes his or her own path through grief and life. I found myself so drawn into each character, each experience, that I could not stop reading. What a beautifully written and exquisite novel.

[Coleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beginning in 1962, the book actually goes back another 20 [or more] years with history of the main character, Barbara, and her husband Michael. Then it moves forward in leaps and bounds with her children and grandchildren. I have read books similar to this previously where the story jumps ahead anywhere from 2-3 years and 19-20 years with the missing pieces either remaining missing or partly filled in. In such a book, the characters seem to me to be of primary importance, with the plot secondary.

The author, Anne Korkeakivi, writes smoothly and well. She draws emotion out of the reader [me] such that you can really feel what the character is feeling. She has written a previous novel, An Unexpected Guest, which I have not read, but I would like to do so.

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

[Christi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This cool story grabbed me from the very beginning. It starts in post-WW II California and follows a young couple's story of their family into present day.
Through the years, the Mom-Barbara, is the central character. The reality of her life is both tragic and wonderful in how she copes with the "what-ifs". Her strength carries the story AND her family. The author weaves in the POV from several of the children. It is a rich book.
I would like to read another by this author!

[Judy Churchill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unbelievably human book about family love and its healing power. The life you start out with is frequently not the life you live. Finding value in all parts of your experience and recognizing the transformative ones is essential.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Time isn’t going to stand still while she figures things out.”

Time won’t stand still for any of Michael Gannon’s family, a WWII veteran and former POW who we fleetingly meet and who suddenly leaves us. We just don’t ever know what direction life will take us, there are no wrong and right choices, nothing is so clean as that. One moment you’re young and fresh, the entire world is yours for the taking, there are so many paths you can walk and then just as suddenly you are planted in the ground and life is springing up around you. How did I become this person? Father, mother… How the heck did I get here? How did it happen so fast? When did I get so old? I always think ‘want to see God laugh, make a plan”. A quote attributed to so many sources, but funny all the same. How differently would each of Michael and Barbara’s children have turned out had Michael lived longer? Choices would have been chewed over, there certainly wouldn’t have been reckless actions, would there have been? Sons wouldn’t leave and disappear, Michael would have kept them anchored! But other lives may not have sprung up on the family tree either, who can understand the whims of fate? Without the passing of one, how could there be breath of life for another?

This is a novel about one family and where the winds blow them all. It’s about loss and moving on with a life far different from the one you opted for. There are no guarantees, but with greedy,hungry hands we grab what we can from life, whether it takes bites out of us or not. In daring to love, we risk losing everything and when you do, you can’t bury yourself in your grief when you have children to raise. To do so would be a betrayal to your beloved, and yourself. Life goes on, let go or be dragged. What could have been, isn’t. It’s as simple and as painful as that. Their lives aren’t a tragedy, nor a success but everything in between. Any of us can ponder on our lives if we’re old enough to look back, and relate to the mistakes- no matter how perfectly your life has turned out, there is something that blew you off course, or hands you didn’t hold tight to, people you lost, doors that closed as much as twists of fate that worked out for the best. Shining Sea let’s the reader float alongside Michael and Barbara’s imperfect family as they move through the years, there are lean times and fruitful ones. There is love as much as heartbreak, what more can you ask of a life? What more can you expect?

Little, Brown and Company

Out Now

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won Shining Sea through a Goodreads giveaway. I’m not sure how I feel about this book. The story immediately pulled me into the lives of the Gannon family. The story is about Barbara Gannon and her five children. We learn a little about Barbara and Mike, how the met and that he survived being a POW in WWII. Mike has a heart attack while they are painting the house one Easter. His death affects each of them very differently. They try to cope, each in his own way, but they never seem to come together to comfort each other, which alienates them rather them bringing them closer as a family. As the story progresses Barbara loses one of her three sons to Vietnam. One of her two daughters makes very poor choices while the other daughter’s choice is not made clear until the end of the book. Very little is said about Barbara’s second marriage.

Just when I felt I was getting into the flow of the book the whole POV changes without warning to a character, one of the sons, we know almost nothing about. I enjoyed reading about Francis and his exploits during his 30s but it seemed to come out of nowhere and took up the middle of the book. I was also disappointed in the number of years that were skipped over and the major events that happened. This book seemed to me like it could have been a series, with each book being about a different character. I would have enjoyed that. The ending of the book with Francis, now 63 (what happened during the 30 years in between?), was a bit of a letdown.

[Andrea (EvergreensAndBookishThings) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a review copy I read provided by Little Brown as part of their ambassador program, and it was a lovely surprise. I was a little wary about what seemed like a lack of plot - yet I immediately identified with the protagonist Barbara, as she navigates life with her five children (one still in the womb) after the death of her husband. It reminded me a great deal of Commonwealth - just an engrossing, intimate portrait of a family and how seemingly small events, and our perceptions of events, have such a huge impact on generations to come. The point of view shifts between Barbara and her prodigal son Francis to give the full picture of the family as it evolves over a generation. There was a section in the middle of the book dedicated to Francis' journey that felt a bit long, especially since I loved Barbara the most. Overall though, the narrative moves quickly through time, sometimes jumping nearly a decade forward, and still feels well paced. I really enjoyed this one, and will be thinking of these vivid characters for some time.
Visit http://www.bornandreadinchicago.com/ for more reviews and bookish musings.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Little, Brown and Goodreads for this book for exchange for my honest review.

I love books about families especially when it starts in the 60s and ends decades later. I loved the family, it's good times and bad. Great characters all of them. The only thing is that it didn't focus on the eldest son but mostly on the others and the eldest daughter. The middle of the book mostly focused on Francis and his boat trip and the rough seas. It got a little tedious but got through it to the end of the book where all the kids/grandkids were grown up and their lives in 1995.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shining Sea transports the reader from World War II to the present day, crisscrossing from the beaches of Southern California to the Woodstock rock festival and many other places in between. It is the story of how one's life can change in the drop of a hat; it is a profound depiction of the ripple effects of war, and above all recreation and survival.
Each character's story is rich and excellently crafted and above all the characters are flawed, human and so very easy to relate to despite the era the story focuses on.
I look forward to reading more from this author.

[Chattynatty Van Waning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara,mother, and Francis, son, are the characters that “sold” this book for me. I liked the way Anne, author, moved these characters throughout time (Francis is 9at beginning of book and 63 y.o.by end of book). I was intrigued by the Vietnam War introduction at the beginning of the book (just watched Ken Burns Vietnam documentary). Real story about real family.

[Ann Chambers · Rating 5 out of 5]

One is immediately pulled into the Gannon family life in this great book by Anne Korkeakivi. The reader first relives the horrors of life (and near pending death) of a Pacific Theater Prisoner of War during World War II. He marries one of his caretakers while recovering. Sound too cute and trite? Hardly. This chance meeting and ensuing marriage is the start of the Gannon family story. Never fully recovering from the war, Dr. Gannon, our P.O.W., dies prematurely leaving a widow with five small children. This is their story.
Korkeakivi follows the widow, Barbara, through her personal growth and remarriage while raising her children in the 1960s and 1970s. These were tumultuous years. Through her children we remember the horrors of the Vietnam War and the “stoned” experience of Woodstock. The family story also takes us to Europe and unrest and personal fights in London and Scotland in the 1980s. We even relive the AIDS epidemic.
This book reminds us of the personal, human experience brought on by world events in our modern history. For some of us, it’s a walk down memory lane as we remember people, like the Gannon family, who took direct hits from Vietnam, or AIDS. The book, though, isn’t a book about defeat and failures, though there is some of that. It’s also a story about moving on, recovering from the past and making a future. This is how I felt near the end of the book about Barbara’s attendance at her grandson’s graduation from medical school.
“Shining Sea” is a comfortable read, even though the topics aren’t always comfortable. It’s hard to put down. Korkeakivi covers a lot of time and space, but it isn’t overwhelming. It is worth the read.

Ann Chambers Noble
Cora, Wyoming

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't as swept away by this novel as some readers. This is a subtle story about the Gannon family. Set from 1962-2015, the story of their lives is compressed in chapters focused on a few family members. Dr. Michael Gannon (43) is a WWII soldier who fought and endured hardships in the Pacific Rim. It is Easter weekend in 1962, he is painting the house, and incurs a fatal cardiac infarction. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, whom he met while in recovery after the war, their four children Mike Jr., Patty Ann, Luke, Francis and a yet unborn daughter, Desiree (Sissy).
The story follows Barbara after the death of Michael. Her marrying Ronald McClosky a bachelor who has little interest in Barbara and her children.
The Vietnam war begins and Barbara is concerned about the safety of her male children. Luke is drawn by the Woodstock music scene, avoids college, is drafted and is killed. Francis goes to Europe and his friend Eugene serves. Eugene commits suicide upon his return. Patty Anne is married three times and has a gaggle of children. Barbara takes in the youngest, Kenny, of the first three conceived.
While the story of this American family was somewhat interesting and the time period captured, I felt little connection to the characters and a lack of depth to the story. It could be compared to watching a reel to reel tape of the lives of the Gannon family. Not remarkable nor memorable.

[Gloria Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story follows one family from 1962 through 2015. Though in fact, flashbacks from Michael and Barbara go to WWII and immediately after. They are a married couple though in the first chapter he has a heart attack. We follow his wife and children and then their children through time and space. For the most part I really enjoyed this book though I wasn't totally immersed in it. Chapters jumped ahead by 10 years or more. People showed up in odd places such as overseas, for quite a long chapter that didn't seem to fit with the story at all.

It did make me think though about my own family and about how people in the same family can be so different in goals and personalities. Also the major national and world events change the trojectory of a family and seem to change goals and objectives.

I wouldn't say I loved the book. That is too strong an endorsement when there are so many books I have loved more. But it did make me think and held my attention except for that long odd chapter. I don't know if I would go out looking for more books by the same author, but I probably wouldn't immediately reject them either. There are just so many good books out there to read yet. So this is a semi-endorsement. If you have access to it, read it. Otherwise choose something else more highly rated. Really, I give this about 3 1/2 stars -- just a little better than average.