An unforgettable coming-of-age story and a luminous portrayal of a dramatic era of American history, Rebecca Chaceās Leaving Rock Harbor takes readers into the heart of a New England mill town in the early twentieth century.
On the eve of World War I, fourteen-year-old Frankie Ross and her parents leave their simple life in Poughkeepsie to seek a new beginning in the booming city of Rock Harbor, Massachusetts. Frankieās father finds work in a bustling cotton mill, but erupting labor strikes threaten to dismantle the townās socioeconomic structure. Frankie soon befriends two charismatic young menāWinslow Curtis, privileged son of the townās most powerful politician, and Joe Barros, a Portuguese mill worker who becomes a union organizerāforming a tender yet bittersweet love triangle that will have an impact on all three throughout their lives.
Inspired in part by Chaceās family history, Frankieās journey to adulthood takes us through the First World War and into the Jazz Age, followed by the Great Depressionāfrom rags to riches and back again. Her life parallels the evolution of the mill town itself, and the lost promise of a boomtown that everyone thought would last forever.
Of her acclaimed novel Capture the Flag, the Los Angeles Times said, "Chaceās writing resembles a generation of New York writers heavily influenced by John Updike: Rick Moody, A. M. Homes, Susan Minot, and, more recently, Melissa Bank." With its lyrical prose and compelling style, Leaving Rock Harbor further establishes Chaceās position in that literary tradition.