Graveyard of the Atlantic

“Hagy’s writing and characters are worth getting to know.”—The New York Times Book Review

Life on the Outer Banks of North Carolina is filled with contradictions: a wildness of spirit alongside astonishing beauty, while the encroaching sea continues to take its toll. In Graveyard of the Atlantic, first published in 2000, Alyson Hagy explores the lives of those who persist at the eroding edge of a landscape that is as harsh and glorious as any human heart.

“Alyson Hagy’s stories have grit and the tang of seawater—and they sound like no one else’s. They are about men and women who live alongside great bodies of water and who are in the grip of great forces of nature, transfixed by them. These stories pulse and burn, like a rope traveling rapidly through your hands.”—Charles Baxter

“You can hear the surf and smell the cut bait. And you can enter the lives of a host of colorful characters, each expressing his or her own kind of longing as well as a connection to this lush place. . . . This collection is a prize.”—Jill McCorkle

“Strong, polished stories. . . . Hagy’s spare prose and flinty dialogue vividly conjures the ocean-sprayed atmosphere of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. . . . Honest work from a thoughtful craftswoman.”—Kirkus Reviews