Land of Cockaigne by Jeffrey Lewis

On a plot of land on the coast of Maine, once a summer resort, married couple Walter Rath and Catherine “Charley” Gray are trying to assuage their grief and make meaningful their murdered son’s life by building what they hope will be a brief version of paradise for fifteen hand-selected young men from the Bronx—8 African-Americans, 7 Hispanics—who will stay in the Rath’s 220-acre camp on the coast for two weeks, all expenses paid. But the people of their town, Sneeds Harbor, have concerns. There are well-meaning doubts and unfounded fears, as well as well-hidden prejudices. Their actions under scrutiny and Walter having doubts about the project’s value, the Raths’ marriage starts to unravel—just as the boys start heading north.
The story of a couple determined not to become a statistic (16% of all marriages don’t survive the death of a child) and a community that wants to support them at the same time it wants to protect itself from people from whom it doesn’t need protection, Land of Cockaigne is at once a mirror and a cautionary tale—and a glimpse at life in small-town Maine.
JEFFREY LEWIS has won a string of awards for his novels including the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Literary Fiction, the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for General Fiction, and the ForeWord Silver Medal for Fiction. His most recent book, Bealport: A Novel of a Town, was a 2019 Maine Literary Awards finalist. He has also received two Emmy Awards and the Writers Guild of America Award, as well as ten additional Emmy nominations and six additional Writers Guild nominations, for his work as a television writer—most notably for Hill Street Blues—and producer. A winner of the Humanitas Prize, the People’s Choice Award, a GLAAD Media Award, two NAACP Image Awards, and a Golden Globes nomination, he divides his time between Maine and Los Angeles.