Friday, May 20, 2016

Friday Freebie: Safe From the Sea and The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye


Congratulations to Julia Brown, Michael Cooper, Shaundelle Moore, Martha Gifford, and Ginger Heatwole, winners of last week’s Friday Freebie giveaway: Heart Attack Watch by Alyson Foster

This week’s book contest features two novels by Peter Geye: Safe From the Sea and The Lighthouse Road, both published by Unbridled Books. Peter’s newest novel, Wintering, will be released next month, so if you haven’t already read his backlist, the Friday Freebie is here to help. Unbridled Books will send copies of both Safe From the Sea and The Lighthouse Road to two lucky readers. Once you’ve read these two novels, I’m confident you’ll be eager to buy a copy of Wintering. For a preview of the new book, check out this Front Porch Books.

Safe From the Sea
Set against the powerful lakeshore landscape of northern Minnesota, Safe from the Sea is a heartfelt novel in which a son returns home to reconnect with his estranged and dying father thirty-five years after the tragic wreck of a Great Lakes ore boat that the father only partially survived and that has divided them emotionally ever since. When his father for the first time finally tells the story of the horrific disaster he has carried with him so long, it leads the two men to reconsider each other. Meanwhile, Noah’s own struggle to make a life with an absent father has found its real reward in his relationship with his sagacious wife, Natalie, whose complications with infertility issues have marked her husband’s life in ways he only fully realizes as the reconciliation with his father takes shape. Peter Geye has delivered an archetypal story of a father and son, of the tug and pull of family bonds, of Norwegian immigrant culture, of dramatic shipwrecks and the business and adventure of Great Lakes shipping in a setting that simply casts a spell over the characters as well as the reader.

The Lighthouse Road
Against the wilds of sea and wood, a young immigrant woman settles into life outside Duluth in the 1890s, still shocked at finding herself alone in a new country, abandoned and adrift; in the early 1920s, her orphan son, now grown, falls in love with the one woman he shouldn’t and uses his best skills to build them their own small ark to escape. But their pasts travel with them, threatening to capsize even their fragile hope. In this triumphant novel, Peter Geye has crafted another deeply moving tale of a misbegotten family shaped by the rough landscape in which they live--often at the mercy of wildlife and weather--and by the rough edges of their own breaking hearts. Leif Enger (author of Peace Like a River) had this to say about the book: “The Lighthouse Road is a cinematic thundercloud gusting across the northern landscape Peter Geye so clearly loves. With its conflicted heroes and their seafaring, bootlegging, lumber-camp agonies, this book understands hard work and heartbreak--it takes no shortcuts but delivers its cargo in generous style, a tale wrapped in blizzards and viewed through the glass eye of history.”

If you’d like a chance at winning both novels by Peter Geye, simply email your name and mailing address to


Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line. Please include your mailing address in the body of the e-mail. One entry per person, please. Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on May 26, at which time I’ll draw the winning names. I’ll announce the lucky readers on May 27. If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email. Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning? Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter. Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.


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