The Inland Sea: Fiction Hardcover - 2000

From the publisher

The Inland Sea is a beautifully written, poignant novel told in a series of twelve intricately connected stories depicting twenty-five years in the life of Vincent Torno and the extremes of family and landscape that shape and haunt him.

Vincent is the youngest child in an Italian-American family living in California's San Joaquin Valley. With a World War II veteran--businessman father whose conception of a logical, ordered world is both oppressive and reassuring, and a mother whose never-discussed mental illness and recurrent breakdowns crash through the family like waves, Vincent is a boy whose desire for understanding is particularly acute. But as he moves farther out into the world--to the Midwest, Seattle, Manhattan--he finds it hardly more comprehensible than his own family. And even that which seemed most stable--the landscape of his once-agricultural hometown--is transformed with disorienting rapidity.

Rich and vivid, The Inland Sea chronicles Vincent Torno's twisting journey to a time when he finally comes to grips with the hard, hazardous, and always unsettling work of love and forgiveness.The Inland Sea is a beautifully written, poignant novel told in a series of twelve intricately connected stories depicting twenty-five years in the life of Vincent Torno and the extremes of family and landscape that shape and haunt him.

Vincent is the youngest child in an Italian-American family living in California's San Joaquin Valley. With a World War II veteran--businessman father whose conception of a logical, ordered world is both oppressive and reassuring, and a mother whose never-discussed mental illness and recurrent breakdowns crash through the family like waves, Vincent is a boy whose desire for understanding is particularly acute. But as he moves farther out into the world--to the Midwest, Seattle, Manhattan--he finds it hardly more comprehensible than his own family. And even that which seemed most stable--the landscape of his once-agricultural hometown--is transformed with disorienting rapidity.

Rich and vivid, The Inland Sea chronicles Vincent Torno's twisting journey to a time when he finally comes to grips with the hard, hazardous, and always unsettling work of love and forgiveness.The Inland Sea is a beautifully written, poignant novel told in a series of twelve intricately connected stories depicting twenty-five years in the life of Vincent Torno and the extremes of family and landscape that shape and haunt him.

Vincent is the youngest child in an Italian-American family living in California's San Joaquin Valley. With a World War II veteran--businessman father whose conception of a logical, ordered world is both oppressive and reassuring, and a mother whose never-discussed mental illness and recurrent breakdowns crash through the family like waves, Vincent is a boy whose desire for understanding is particularly acute. But as he moves farther out into the world--to the Midwest, Seattle, Manhattan--he finds it hardly more comprehensible than his own family. And even that which seemed most stable--the landscape of his once-agricultural hometown--is transformed with disorienting rapidity.

Rich and vivid, The Inland Sea chronicles Vincent Torno's twisting journey to a time when he finally comes to grips with the hard, hazardous, and always unsettling work of love and forgiveness.