To Be Sung Underwater

Tom McNeal

A literary novel about Judith Whitman, a disillusioned Hollywood film editor in her forties whose comfortable but unsatisfying marriage leads her to reconnect with the memory of Willy Blunt, the Nebraska carpenter she loved and left as a teenager. The story alternates between Judith's present-day life in California and her formative teenage summers in the small town of Rufus Sage, Nebraska. It's a quiet, character-driven meditation on first love, regret, and the paths not taken, building toward an emotionally resonant conclusion.