In this powerful love story that takes place on a Turkish sailing vessel, Lily, a professor at a Florida college, finds herself required to be the companion of her newly widowed mother as they take a cruise along the Turkish coastline on a small sailing ketch. Expecting to endure, though not enjoy, this trip among her motherβs friends, Lily instead finds herself falling in love with Izak, the charismatic Turkish captain of the boat, a man whose powers of kindness, strength and tenderness touch Lily in a way that awaken longings in her she had given up long ago.
Lillyβs infatuation with Izak surprises her and at first she resists her feelings, knowing that it would be nearly impossible for an American college professor and a Turkish sailor to find a meeting place to join their lives. However, one day while the others are on a trip away from the boat taking a tour to see the sights, Lily finds herself alone with Izak and their passion reveals itself.
About the Author
Merrill Joan Gerber is a prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Among her novels are The Kingdom of Brooklyn , winner of the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine for βthe best English-language book of fiction on a Jewish theme,β Anna in the Afterlife , chosen by the Los Angeles Times as a βBest Novel of 2002β and King of the World , which won the Pushcart Editorsβ Book Award. She has written five volumes of short stories. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker , The Atlantic , Mademoiselle , The Sewanee Review , The Virginia Review , Commentary , Salmagundi , The American Scholar , The Southwest Review , and elsewhere.
Her story, βI Donβt Believe This,β won an O. Henry Prize. βThis is a Voice From Your Pastβ was included in The Best American Mystery Stories.
Her non-fiction books include a travel memoir, Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence; a book of personal essays, Gut Feelings: A Writerβs Truths and Minute Inventions; and Old Mother, Little Cat: a Writerβs Reflections on her Kitten, her Aged Mother . . . and Life.
Gerber earned her BA in English from the University of Florida, her MA in English from Brandeis University, and was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fiction Fellowship to Stanford University. She presently teaches fiction writing at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.