Winner:

Carl Sandburg Award

Winner:

Society of Midland Authors Award

Finalist:

Lambda Literary Award

Imagine how different your life might be if you had taken another path at a crucial turning point in the past. Aquamarine explores the intricate ways early choices reverberate throughout a life. Shown in triptych is Jesse Austin, on the verge of turning forty in 1990, inhabiting three equally possible lives.

Jesse's choices have variously brought her to marry, divorce, or remain single, to love men or women, to live close to the Missouri hometown or deliberately far away. But she is still haunted by the moment when she lost the gold medal for the hundred-meter freestyle at the 1968 Olympics to a seductive Australian swimmer.

Aquamarine weaves together three scenarios of options embraced or discarded, connected by the emotional ties that bind Jesse to the people in her past. The novel plays variations on the themes of lost love and the unlived lives running parallel to the ones we have chosen.

 

"The most original American novel in years."

Chicago Tribune

"This is a swift, tender, highly intelligent book - an original theme, a strong voice...vigorous and humane."

Shirley Hazzard.

"Anshaw's vision is so generous and all-encompassing...we're left...with the feeling that human beings are so complicated and interesting that we all could have ended up anywhere, doing anything...Anshaw seems to have had a lot of fun writing this book, and it's a delight to read."

Village Voice Literary Supplement

"A remarkable book...Anshaw writes with biting humor and a touching reverence for the power of loss."

Boston Globe