Gwendalynn Anders, a mid-Western girl whos never seen the ocean, wonders what was in that joint she smoked a week before waking up on Elysiana, and why it feels like the trip will last the entire summer of 1969. Jack Halcyon, living atop an abandoned twenty-story hotel, wonders how hes able to ponder the incongruities of life after leaving a big chunk of his brain at the scene of an accident. Borough Council President Norman Harlan wonders what cruel God put him on an equal footing with Avery Volpe, the fearsome Captain of the Beach Patrol. Twelve miles long and a mile wide, Elysiana is an island off the coast of New Jersey sitting astride the convergence of powerful fault lines social, political, and existential. It s a place of beauty and insanity, shared by the angelic and profane.
