By The Sea

There is romance in By The Sea. Mystery as well. Humor too. Even the twists and turns of dementia and formidable Black and White female characters. Once a school teacher, long widowed and always the loving mother of her only son Paul, eighty-year-old Pearl Goodwin is tormented by a secret that she has never shared with anyone. As she struggles with dementia, she sometimes takes on various personas – everyone from Lucy Ricardo to a Borscht Belt tummler. Intrigued by this older woman, Sally Martinelli, a poet, and Paul’s new love, offers to share her poetry with Pearl in exchange for badly-cooked Jewish food and glimpses into Pearl’s eclectic past. Through a variety of adventures including a nostalgic visit to Coney Island and a whirlwind tour of Pearl’s Brooklyn as she remembers it, Pearl eventually reveals her secret and is finally free to “reunite” with her first love.Paul and Sally unite as well in a way that pays homage to Pearl’s life and to the lives of other women like her, who persevered on their own at a time when women’s place and power faced formidable resistance. In doing so, they left an enduring legacy for generations of women that followed.