Julie M Dryja

Puckshaw: Island Interrupted Julie M Dryja

Publisher Marketing: PUCKSHAW is a stirring narrative, rich in detail and colorful in characterization. It traces the fate of an American family that is suddenly cast under the harsh glare of notoriety when the shocking journals of Henry Macguire, its deceased patriarch, are posthumously published by his son. His journals detail his arrival on Puckshaw in 1971, when as a young reporter, he stumbled upon the tiny, sizzling island-the summer haven for Boston's elite. Sun-washed and wildly unabashed, the island was resplendent with old-money patriarchs and their attending offspring of ex-presidents, sitting senators and their endless wives and children. Henry, fascinated by island life, makes Puckshaw his home-remaining on the island for twenty-five years and confiding in his journals on a daily basis. Journals that would one-day define his legacy and turn an island upside-down. While covering a tragic story involving two summer residents who had drowned under unusual circumstances, Henry indulges in a destructive obsession. His journals reveal his increasingly erratic behavior and bizarre attachment to the victims. Sensing his own demise, he attempts to reconnect with his long-abandoned son. After Henry's death, his estranged son enjoys sixteen years of peace and prosperity on the island before his teenage sons are cast as suspects in the salacious bludgeoning of a fellow student. With the Macguire reputation in shambles, Henry's descendents would struggle for decades to restore the name to its earlier splendor, thereby assuring it a proud place in the history of a tiny island called Puckshaw.