THE MIDCOAST

An ambitious family’s rise and fall plays out in a small town on the Maine coast.

This debut novel opens with what will also be its last scene: a fancy lawn party and lobster bake on the waterfront property of the Thatch family, prominent in the little town of Damariscotta. A celebration of the Amherst College women’s lacrosse team, of which Allie Thatch is a member, it’s a nice party until local English teacher and lacrosse coach Andrew goes poking around in the house and notices some photos of a burned car with two bodies in it—and then the police show up. The book’s narrator, Andrew was raised in Damariscotta, went away for college and jobs, but has moved his young family back. Andrew sometimes narrates in first person, although much of the story is framed as interviews he does after the day of the party for a book he’s writing. He’s known Ed Thatch since they were teenagers, when Andrew worked for the Lobster Pound, owned by Ed’s father, and Ed treated him like a greenhorn. Ed’s life changed when he met Stephanie LeClair. Although, as one character says, “they don’t come from much,” Steph wants nice things and Ed wants her to have them. Circling between past and present, the book recounts how they get them. While he’s fishing for lobsters, Ed starts burglarizing the posh summer homes along the shore during the off season. From there, it’s a quick slide into smuggling drugs from above the Canadian border. Meanwhile, Steph goes to college and becomes the town’s manager and unofficial mayor, ironically dubbing it “Maine’s Safe Haven.” Their son, EJ, becomes a cop, mainly so he can protect his family’s criminal enterprises. It looks like Allie might just make a step up socially and out of Damariscotta altogether after she gets a lacrosse scholarship. But then that party happens. White handles suspense and a complex plot well, but the characters don’t quite come into focus—it’s never clear why Ed and Steph find each other so compelling, and Allie, who serves as a motivation for many of her family’s actions, is a blank herself until very late in the book.

A small-town riff on The Great Gatsby suffers from underdeveloped characters.