The Outer Cape: A Novel - Hardcover

An Amazon Best Book of July 2017: In this rueful, loving debut novel, Patrick Dacey follows two generations of a WASP family from its passionate beginnings to a decline that feels both incremental and inevitable. When Irene and Robert Kelly meet in 1977, Irene, a would-be painter, is attracted to Robert, an Army veteran, despite a thread of recklessness in his character. A few years after they settle on Cape Cod, Robert’s misguided attempts to keep his real estate development company afloat land him in prison; Irene takes a lowly job as a tax appraiser while struggling to raise their two sons alone. Dacey dedicates The Outer Cape to his own mother, and Irene – despite her weaknesses – is the heroine of this story. Even at her bleakest moments, she refuses to see her marriage to Robert as a mistake, because “without that mistake, she wouldn’t have Nathan and Andrew.” Those boys grow up to have their own struggles. Nathan’s time in the military leaves him with PTSD and a sense that “memories are detonators.” Andrew, determined to be the good guy his father never was, becomes something of a patsy. Yet both make their way off the Cape and into adulthood. Dacey’s decades-long view of this family’s life is enriched by specifics of their eras, and along the way his careful observation and lifelike dialog merit comparisons to Updike and Cheever. --Sarah Harrison Smith, The Amazon Book Review

Patrick Dacey holds an MFA from Syracuse University. He has taught English at several universities in the U.S. and Mexico, and has worked as a reporter, landscaper, door-to-door salesman, and most recently on the overnight staff at a homeless shelter and detox center. His stories have been featured in The Paris Review, Zoetrope All-Story, Guernica, Bomb magazine, and Salt Hill among other publications. He is the author of We've Already Gone This Far.