THE TWELVE LIVES OF SAMUEL HAWLEY

This beautiful, haunting novel chronicles the relationship of Samuel Hawley, hardened criminal and sometime fugitive, and his teenage daughter Loo. Through alternating chronologies - every other chapter is a flashback to life before fatherhood - we come to understand the contradictions that comprise both characters: grief and acceptance, loss and love, violence and tenderness, loneliness and belonging. Hawley and Loo's gorgeous, melancholy story is interwoven with their connection to the skies above them - through Loo’s understanding of and fascination with the stars - and the danger and beauty of water, in their seaside town and in the stories of their past.
This story is filled with fishermen foraging for shelled creatures, so these mussels steamed in wine and garlic from @jessseinfeld ’s Food Swings cookbook seemed a perfect match. High on yum and low on labor, which is my kind of recipe. Plus they smell like summer by the beach.
My own Dad bought this book for me at a bookshop in Montauk, another town filled with salt air and seagulls circling above. So it seems fitting to include these rocks I gathered with my boys from our favorite beach there. Seeing them in my kitchen on this fall day brings me back to summer, when I couldn’t put this lovely page-turner down.