Books Books: Domestic Fiction

Dawnland

October 11, 2024October 11, 2024 by onemoreexclamation

Welcome to the Dawnland by Tess Callahan Book Tour hosted by Suzy Approved Book Tours.

About the Book

Title: Dawnland

Written by: Tess Callahan

Release Date: September 3, 2024

Publisher: Little A

Find it: Amazon

April, her brother-in-law Oliver, and their families reunite in Cape Cod on an exquisite stretch of beach called Dawnland. After eleven summers of building traditions – kayaking, whale watching, bonfires, and ocean swims – this year comes with new threats both on and off the coastline.

Before their marriages, April and Oliver had an intense but disastrous fling that they kept hidden. Although they moved on with their lives, their more recent fiery encounter is getting harder to keep secret. As the week unravels, revealing fault lines not only between husbands and wives but between brothers, fathers and sons, and children growing up amid discord and lies. Ground zero for conflict is April’s volatile teenage son, Lochlann.

The family structure begins to teeter. Secrets are surfacing. As everyone faces the consequences of their choices, the truth could finally forge them together or tear them apart forever.

Check out my blog post for April and Oliver

About The Author

Tess Callahan is the author of April & Oliver. Her essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Writer’s Digest, National Public Radio, AGNI, Narrative Magazine, AWP: The Writer’s Notebook, Newsday, The Common, the Best American Poetry blog, and elsewhere. Her TEDx talk on creativity is titled “The Love Affair Between Creativity and Constraint.”

Tess is a graduate of Boston College and Bennington College Writing Seminars. She teaches creative writing and meditation. A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, she lives in Cape Cod and Northern New Jersey with her family and number one life coach: her dog.

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Book Blurbs for Dawnland

“Occasionally a book burns into your occipital lobe unable to leave you. How do you stop longing for something you can never have? Dawnland is a poignant reminder that the longings inside of us never go away. Tess Callahan killed me softly with this book. My heart is still in her hands…~ Tarryn Fisher, NY Times Bestselling Author of The Wives and Good Half Gone

“Tess Callahan writes with furious urgency about yearning and desire. As family secrets are gradually revealed, the reader begins to glimpse how we are all complicit in the dance. Emotionally powerful, Dawnland explores questions of betrayal, guilt and loss, and the high cost we must pay for genuine freedom. The ending will stay with you long after you turn the final page.” – Alan Watt, LA Times bestselling author of Diamond Dogs and The 90-Day Novel

“Tess Callahan works magic in her novel DAWNLAND, writing with mesmerizing lyricism and wisdom about an extended family’s fraught week on Cape Cod. On the eve of their widowed father’s second marriage, two brothers as different as night and day gather with their wives and children for an annual vacation by the ocean that turns out to be anything but mundane. DAWNLAND is a deeply intelligent story about marriage, parenting, adolescence, and the challenge of reckoning with one’s choices. I loved it.” ~ Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party

“Dawnland is about love of all kinds” romantic, doomed, familial, fatalistic, erotic. It is about damaged people standing on cliffs both literal and metaphorical, and how music can slip a wedding ring off as quick as you please” with only a little pain at the knuckle.” ~ Elizabeth Barbato, author of Elpenor Falls

Review for Dawnland

A fantastic sequel to April and Oliver! I enjoyed following up on their story after the first book and can hardly believe there are even more emotions in this story. It’s rare to love the sequel as much as (if not more than) the original story. The characters are complex and real. April and Oliver are at once loveable and aggravating due to their past. Enter one secret after another and you have twists galore. I strongly suggest to start with the first book (April & Oliver). You’re going to go back and read it anyway, might as well do it in order…