Free Shipping On Every Order
Rent More, Save More! Use code: KBRENTAL
5% off 1 book, 7% off 2 books, 10% off 3+ books
The Half Life A Novel
The Half Life A Novel
- ISBN 13: 9781668069134
- ISBN 10: 166806913X
- Format: Hardcover
- Copyright: 07/14/2026
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
List Price $30.00 Save
| TERM | PRICE | DUE |
|---|---|---|
Free Shipping Both Ways
Highlight/Take Notes Like You Own It
Purchase/Extend Before Due Date
Free Shipping On Every Order
List Price $30.00 Save $0.18
Usually Ships in 2-3 Business Days
We Buy This Book Back!
.svg "Free Shipping On Every Order"){kind=icon}
Free Shipping On Every Order
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.
Summary
“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 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.
