“A novel that is, at once, mythic and personal—a novel that possesses the ability to make us remember our own youth and all that has vanished since.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
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).
