Bay of Arrows

by Jay Parini

Jay Parini's previous novel, The Last Station (Holt, 1990), was described by Gore Vidal as "easily one of the best historical novels written in the last twenty years." Now, in Bay of Arrows, Parini redefines the genre of historical fiction itself. Geno, or Christopher Genovese, is a forty-two-year-old professor at a small Vermont college. His wife, Susan, finds him exasperating, while to his young sons, James and Milo, he is downright dangerous. Obsessed by the long poem about Columbus that he's been writing for years, he lets his family responsibilities slide. When he responds in kind to one of his favorite student's sexual overtures, he is really sunk. In the nick of time, the MacAlastair Foundation bestows upon Geno a tax-free "genius" grant in excess of a half million dollars: he takes off for a remote part of the Dominican Republic. Like Robinson Crusoe, he and his dumbstruck family begin life anew on an inlet called the Bay of Arrows. It was here, five hundred years before, that