By the Iowa Sea

An exquisite memoir about the eartbreaks and ecstasies of marriage and fatherhood by a talented new writer from the University of Iowa MFA program.

Joe Blair always had big plans. As a child, he would lie in his bed and study the Easy Rider poster stapled to his wall, dreaming of the day he could wear a leather jacket and be free. In his early twenties, he and his new bride jumped on a motorcycle and rode across America to chase their destiny. Fifteen years later, Joe finds himself in Iowa, working as a heating and air conditioning repairman who reluctantly owns a house, two cars, and a dog. His marriage is failing, and his four children--one of whom is severely autistic--are struggling. "Our history," he writes, "gains more weight day by day. And the future seems more and more unlikely to be anything cool at all." Joe believes it would take an act of great faith or courage to revive in him the hope and passion that once seemed so easy to come by. What it takes, he discovers, is a flood.

With a genuine narrative voice like Rick Bragg's and the raw, emotional power of Rafael Yglesias's novel A Happy Marriage, this a wrenching, unsentimental account of an ordinary man's struggle to live an authentic life. Joe Blair lays bare the heartbreaking yet hopeful story of a river taht became an ocean and of a great love lost and then found again, By the Iowa Sea.