Most of Shelby Raebeck’s novels are set in or near the Hamptons on eastern Long Island, where he grew up. EAST HAMPTON BLUE references a stretch of coast the surfers know as Blue. One of its most avid is Michael, the novel’s protagonist, who narrates this melancholy, often funny, and always genuine story of a man and his community.
Michael’s marriage is on the rocks, the couple’s neuroses challenged by a daughter suffering from anxiety bouts so severe that she is sometimes unable to leave her room. In one touching scene involving a surfing lesson with her father, Tommy cannot bring herself to wade the rest of the way to the shore from the shallow waters where she has been safely delivered.
Michael also struggles with the push-pull business styles of himself and his brother in their construction business. Willie is aggressive, a hustler with big plans; Michael is most interested in the hands-on work, high-minded about the evils of capitalism—particularly in the tourist area where locals battle to maintain their social and physical environment in the face of increasing corporate development.
Even a reader with zero understanding of tourist-town politics or how construction companies work will sense the impending danger ahead. The author has built such rich, well-rounded characters that their bad decisions are believable because their flaws are so skillfully ingrained. He also eludes preachiness; there is not a whiff of didacticism. Raebeck’s methodology is seamless and invisible, but may partly lie in his establishment of Michael’s principles very early on. They’re reflected upon by Michael himself almost apologetically, so that by the time the genuine conflict emerges the reader has been prepared for its anti-development actions and words. The “moral” lines are blurry; as Michael reflects at one point, “Even conservation had, after all, become a business.”
The novel’s engaging dialogue, frequently funny even in the midst of heated arguments, also helps:
“We’re his entrée into East Hampton.”
“His front men.”
“It’s not like the guy is running a prostitution ring.”
“Not a de facto prostitution ring.”
“Will you shut up? If you don’t want the money, don’t take it. Give it to charity.”
“Oh no, Varniver’s given enough to charity.”
“Actually, a prostitution ring might be good for you. You need to get laid.”
Another character who drives the story’s final chapters is Hope. She is a member of the Corchaug people, who live in both East Hampton and their reservation. Beginning with her name, she often serves as a mouthpiece for some of the novel’s themes, as well as its darker undertows. Yet, even so, she is well drawn and complex. Also through her, Raebeck depicts—with a light touch—another entry in the fat tome that is Native history and determination in America. At one point, Hope says, “Our family never quite fit here. Yet here I am.”
Some passages are a bit pedestrian. A summary of a wedding feels perfunctory, and a conversation within it about marriage seems forced. For the most part, however, EAST HAMPTON BLUE is a tightly woven parable about a town seduced and then squeezed until completely dependent on the entity that helped destroy what it was. Its protagonist shares this arc, in progression if not in story: a slow squeeze of understanding as changes among his loved ones awaken him to personal fissures that were always there.
Shelby Raebeck’s EAST HAMPTON BLUE is a compelling story of a stressed East coast tourist town that beautifully depicts the struggles of a man and his loved ones going through big changes. Rich and thorough surfing details further entice.
~Anne Welsbacher for IndieReader