An Ocean in Iowa - Couverture souple

Shirley Manson Harper's Bazaar This funny and supremely moving book is full of hope and possibilities and robustness of spirit.

Jen Nessel The New York Times Book Review Hedges has the ability to climb into a child's mind and simply look around.

Cynthia Hanson The Christian Science Monitor Hedges manages to make his novel a delightful romp through the age of seven with an endearing character who revels in life's smallest details.

Patrick Beach The Des Moines Register Hedges absolutely shines....An Ocean in Iowa is funny, touching, mysterious, and absurd.

Liesel Litzenburger Detroit Free Press Peter Hedges's quietly devastating new novel...is unapolegetically simple and pure, a sadly perfect little tale.

Dale Jones Cedar Rapids Gazette An Ocean in Iowa is a delightful read, full of fancy and vivid imagery of suburban Iowa in the 1960s.

Michael Giltz Entertainment Weekly Funny, unaffected prose...'A.'

What Scotty Said
When he was four or thereabouts, Scotty Ocean liked to stand on the piano bench while his mother, a painter of abstracts, played the only song she knew.
She practiced it daily, her eyes closed, a Salem cigarette burning in the nearby ashtray.
For Scotty there was no place better to be than at her side, where he might tug at her blouse or whisper in her ear or pound the black keys with his fists. But it hardly mattered what he did because when Joan Ocean played her song, everything -- even Scotty -- disappeared.
One day he said something that brought her to a stop.
She made him say it again. This time she watched closely as his pink lips shaped the sounds. She would never forget it. Later it would haunt her: his eyes, his voice, and the words, spoken simply...
"Seven is going to be my year."
Copyright © 1998 by Peter Hedges