In That Night, New York Times bestselling author Alice McDermott,
"has taken a suburban teenage romance and pregnancy and infused it with
the power, the ominousness, and the star-crossed romanticism of a
contemporary Romeo and Juliet" (Chicago Tribune)
A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
It is high summer, the early 1960s. Sheryl and Rick, two Long Island
teenagers, share an intense, all-consuming love. But Sheryl's widowed
mother steps between them, and one moonlit night Rick and a gang of
hoodlums descend upon her quiet neighborhood.
That night, driven by Rick's determination to reclaim Sheryl, the young
men provoke a violent confrontation, and as fathers step forward to
protect their turf, notions of innocence belonging to both sides of the
brawl are fractured forever.
Alice McDermott's That Night "is as carefully constructed as a poem,
giving off a lustrous glow, and is poignant in the telling" (People).