Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Estep Nagy has a beautiful way with words. There were several passages I highlighted and reread because of their eloquence and vividness. My problem was the structure and story. Shifting between the 1940's and 1960's the story revolves around two society sisters, their husbands and offspring. Sisters, Hannah and Lia share a small island in Maine, where each own a home where the families vacation, although the sisters are estranged and living in close proximity is uncomfortable. Early on we learn one sister has passed away and told through memories and past recollections we learn the cause of the estrangement and death.
The story moves very slowly, the characters are incredibly dry, the constant shifting of time and place was confusing and the dilemma facing the families was lackluster. I found the ending ambiguous without any real action or resolution.
I felt zero attachment or sympathy for any of the characters making this just an ok read.

Lost interest. Could not finish. Story dragged. It was hapharzardly put together.

DECLINED TO REVIEW. Although a slow pace is forgivable in a deliberately dense, delicately stylish character study, especially one with as unique and interesting a premise as Estep Nagy's <i>We Shall Not All Sleep</i> (in which two families have shared a small island in Maine since Revolutionary times, developing a bizarrely dysfunctional, Kennedy-Compound-like insular culture, with our particular story looking at the schism in the mid-1960s between the older generation of gruff military veterans and their countercultural baby-boomer children), unfortunately this book was just way <i>too</i> slowly paced for me; and when I found it taking me a week to choke my way unwillingly through just the first 50 glacial pages, I decided at that point to just give up on it altogether. This book definitely has an audience that will enjoy it, because it's certainly not a bad story; but if you're not into novels that move at a snail's pace, do yourself a favor and avoid it altogether.

The ocean salt-air smells of Maine are worth remembering.....

John was coming to Seven Island from New York after receiving an invitation by Billy Quick, his old friend from Princeton, whom he had not seen for fifteen years when they were trying to repair their damaged friendship.
Billy offered John a trip to Seven with the intention of spiritual reconciliation of sorts.
After his flight, John met at the boat dock, where the Island manager, Cyrus, would help him board 'Heron'......the Island boat.
"The boat moved out of the harbor into the bay, past a color wheel of lobster buoys,
past huge cloud formations, ever deeper, it seemed, into the salt air. Soon the island speck divided, clarified, gained contrast: from nowhere, miles of wood extended in two directions. He couldn't see where they ended, and it struck him that Seven Island was much bigger than he imagined".
"Two houses, one white and one yellow, sat high up on a grassy hill. Outbuildings and a barn were scattered around, all of them painted electric red that Wilkie had only ever seen in Maine.

The Hillsingers had built the first house not long after the Revolution. After the Civil War, the Quicks built the new house. Seven Island was jointly owned by both the Hillsingers and Quicks from the beginning. A farmhouse was expanded - and other quarters were built for farmers and staff.
The new house was white - taller and squarer, rather than yellow... grander volumes and modern furniture.
The Hill house was a pure product of its time.... elegant facade faced the water.
There was also a children's house where all the children stayed from both families.

This Island setup with these two families - kids - daily jobs to do - [sheep which needed to be hauled to the neighboring island - Baffin - for grazing their clover fields in preparation for the annual Migration, staff members: cook, caretakers, etc.], ... felt like an intentional community compound. The tensions between the adults felt exactly like I imagined joint families would be like. The way the different children - of different ages played and worked felt the same: community living!

Billy Quick, successful financier, married Hannah Blackwell
Jim Hillsingers, CIA operative, married Hannah's sister, Lila Blackwell.
Just one big happy family in the two main houses on Island Seven ---- NOT QUITE.

Wilkie was one of those friends - that had a connection with both families - he stayed in regular contact with Lila throughout many years. He liked Jim. He was inseparable friends with Billy at one time, and he knew more about Hannah than most of her family did because of political issues.
I thought his character in this story was vital --There was more than one reason he was an invited as a guest for 4 days.

We learn early into the story that Hannah died.....yet will learn more about her death later.
The one year anniversary of her death is the same weekend as the migration. She was living in New York with Billy.....a young married couple. She was teaching Elementary school.....when trouble began.
John Wilkie knocked on their door to speak to Hannah about a letter she received from the Board of Education. His orders came from his father, Peregrine Wilkie.
Hannah was in serious trouble for having once been a member of the communist party while she was in college… Not an active member… And no longer a member… However
once a member at 'any' time - no matter how short - made her a forever communist with severe ramifications for she, her husband, extending family members, and her father. Everyone could lose their jobs. This Supreme Court affirmed the "Feinberg Law" ... ( prohibits communists from teaching in public schools), ALREADY GUILTY IN THE EYES OF THE LAW. No trial, no investigation, no debate, it is a public hanging.

The part of the story about Hannah made my head swim. There was so much unfairness to the story I wanted to scream. So, what did I do? I visited my friend google -- to see how many other people - FOR REAL - have suffered - been accused wrongly? How many activist have gone FOREVER SOUR??
I learned that the law does set standards for hiring teachers.... but it ignores the possibility that a person might have joined out of ignorance, or social pressure. There is little room for mistake ..... making for an unjust law.

Jim Hillsinger was also falsely accused of treason....
There were some heavy crisis going on in the story, including infidelity. I learned a lot about the historical communism accusations.

We have many Joyful moments too ... Martha's homemade biscuits- yummy meals -
games the kids play -and try to get away with - debate of weather OWLS are on the island....and outside summer adventures.

Added pleasure was the children. Don't children just add lightness at the best of times - when we need it most? The most precious scene is with Lila's youngest six-year-old daughter.
"Little Isa had asked why they built fairy houses only out of things that were on the ground. The things they used, Isa said, like bark and pinecones, fell apart too quickly;
The fairy house they built just yesterday had already collapsed".

"Fairies, Lila had said to her daughter, are different from us. They are so pure that they don't see dirt. All they see is a pinecone that had once been part of their friend the pine tree, or bits of soil shaken loose from their friend the earth. Above all things, she said, fairies wanted to be among their friends".

"But what do fairies eat?" Isa said for the thousandth time".
"Fairies eat the sunlight", Lila said yet again.
Isa paused.
"What if it rains?" up to that point. Lila felt they were in the domain of ritual, and she was content to answer, as many times as necessary, and that spirit. But this was a new question.
"If it rains, Lila said hopefully, "then they eat clouds."
"Is that way the sun comes back again?" Lila smiled, but chose not to answer. The logic of fairies, if pursued too far, could end up in a scary place."


WONDERFUL DEBUT NOVEL!

Thank You Bloomsbury, Netgalley, and Estep Nagy

I tried, but I just could not connect to these people or this story. Too many plot lines added I think, to the dissatisfaction of this. I liked moments in the story, but there were not enough of them to make me give this a better review. I do not think I'll be reading any more by this author.

**Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley in exchange of an honest review.**

In 1965 two families, the Quicks and the Hillsingers, gather on an idyllic Maine island. They are preparing for Migration Day when the sheep are gathered and transported to the rich clover fields of a neighboring island, a time of feasting and celebration.

Seven Island and its archipelago of islands have belonged to the families for seven generations; their ancestors had made their fortunes as privateers. The Blackwell sisters Lila and Hannah married into the families: Lila marrying Jim Hilsinger, a CIA operative, and Hannah marrying successful financier Billy Quick.

This year, Jim Hillsinger has invited a man from their past, John Wilkie, to join them.

Activist teacher Hannah's idealism led her to the Communist Party until she saw its irrelevance to the problems of her Harlem students. She couldn't escape notice of the government agencies sniffing out Red spies, leading her to commit a desperate act.

Lila's husband has been falsely accused of treason and ousted from the CIA after an illustrious career; in Warsaw he had been feared by the KGB as The Black Prince.

As the adults struggle with their crisis of family and country, Jim Hilsinger is determined to harden his twelve-year-old son Catta for survival in the vicious Cold War world as he knows it--by stranding the boy alone on an island overnight.

"Majestic cliffs rose up behind him. Birds called. A flock of sheep tumbled down the hill, and the smell of cut grass and smoke ran alongside the ethereal salt. The sun was hot and the wind cool. He had never, in all his life, been anywhere so beautiful. Someday, he thought, you will have to leave this place."

John Wilkie's first sight of the Maine island made me nostalgic. We had camped in Maine for seven or more trips, in love with those woods rising from the ocean, the islands rimmed with granite shores, the lobster boats bobbing from trap to trap in the sunshine. We climbed the mountains and gazed upon the off shore green islands that arose abruptly from the intense blue sea. We sought out the rock-bound tidal pools, the sweep of sand in it's bowl of cliff, and the inland quiet tarn with its beaver and Siberian Iris.

"Among the rock and penury of Northern Maine, it was a geological freak that there existed here a mile-long white-sand beach in a crescent shape, in a protected harbor facing the open sea."

The families make thick pancakes spread with local orange butter, gather around fireplaces in the evening; to Wilkie they are "moments of perfection" that "often come toward the end of something rather than its beginning, that the light of every supernova comes from an explosion."

The children's world parallels their parent's. Fairy houses are made and baby lambs are born, there are days wandering the island with homemade biscuits secreted in pockets for lunch. Then there is James who secretly bullies new arrivals and leads the boys in brutal games.

Catta is victim of both worlds, abused by his older, jealous brother James, and abandoned, unprepared, by his father on Baffin Island, expected to prove he is 'a man.' It is the end of innocence, a realization that the adult world is corrupt and that children were reared to be warriors "for the slaughter."

We Shall Not All Sleep is an intriguing Cold War family drama with elements of a spy thriller and mystery. The complicated and convoluted thread that snares the Quicks, Hilsingers, and Wilkies is slowly unraveled. I was riveted.

“While sharing nothing else, lila thought, this man and her husband both spoke from a very hot core of certainty.”

In We Shall Not All Sleep, there are two houses on the Seven Island- one for the Hillsingers one for the Quicks’ and the two are rooted in each other. Despite sharing the island and marrying wealthy sisters, Billy Quick and Jim Hillsinger keep the families apart. It is the anniversary of Hannah’s death, surviving sister Lila is finding herself drawn to Billy, and the children are running wild. “Billy Quick hated mysticism in all it’s many forms, but it was nevertheless true that, with Lila, only vanishing images were real.” In a sweet conversation about what fairies eat, we come to see this ethereal side of Lila. “But what do fairies eat?” Isa said for the thousandth time. “Fairies eat the sunlight.” Lila said yet again. Jim is a spy kicked out of the CIA, the reader is thrown between past and present slowly unraveling what has happened. With Hannah the author is touching on a time in history when suspicions of communism ran rampant. Jim was accused of treason, but must go quietly, though innocent. Hannah is guilty, but why? She is just a teacher. How did this happen? That Hannah had cut ties with the family, working as a teacher in a sort of ‘invisible’ manner may well have been the nail in her coffin. We find out what happened with Hannah in flashbacks through time. Sometimes it made the reading difficult, just when I was immersed in the present it interrupted the flow. The ‘help’ is as much a part of the two island, juggling the difficulty of the families emotional distance. Beyond Lila, I was less interested in the adults and more in the children as they were beautiful creations. “Penny Quick asked questions, and she was watching all the time. The alert ones were the most dangerous, and Martha had never seen her before last week.” They are each full of character, some cruel, others sweet.

The dissension between Lila and Jim are in the banishment of their young son Catta to an island nearby. In this the reader is reminded of a time when sons were ‘toughened up’ and ‘mad a man’ by being thrown into situations beyond their age. A time when women didn’t have as much control in what their husbands decided for their children. Catta changes after the incident, but his future isn’t meant to become like the old generation of men before him. The strain between the families is a thick fog, misunderstanding, animosity, blame, desires… There are moments in this story that worked for me, but times when I got lost with the back and forth. It reads as a literary historical fiction, and the author doesn’t need to come out and state why there is tension, it’s alive in every conversation, comment, action of the characters. Wealth isn’t without a rotten core. I had a hard time connecting with the adults, the children were far more interesting to me. I was expecting more intrigue, or maybe I missed it. I liked it, but I didn’t fully follow what was happening and found myself going back to read again which is unusual for me.

Publication Date: July 4, 2017

Bloomsbury USA

This novel looked promising, but looks can be deceiving. It's certainly ambitious, but the best way I can describe it is that it concentrated so much on being literary, it forgot to be good. The writing in itself is strong, but the narrative doesn't work. The layers aren't crafted precisely, so it meanders, obfuscates itself, confuses. Some of the 1960s flashbacks are quite good, but the story is all over the place, so much so that it's impossible to connect with it on any meaningful level. There is a cohesive plot somewhere there about spy intrigue, wealth, McCarthyism and its devastation, but all of this is buried under the aforementioned layers in such a way that overall effect is occasionally moot and consistently muted. No dramatic immediacy, no emotional engagement, just words. Reads quickly, at least, but contrary to its title, won't do much for one's awakeness levels. Thanks Netgalley.

Jim Hillsinger and Billy Quick share Seven Islamd, as their families have for generations and are technically in-laws through their wives. During one summer, the loss of Hannah Quick will draw Lila Hillsinger - her sister - towards Billy; Jim will leave their youngest son Catta on the wild and unsettled Baffin Island for twenty-four hours; and the sadistic James Hillsinger will lead the other children in terrible games, all to the backdrop of the annual Migration which involves transporting all of Seven Island's sheep to North Island for better grazing.

The novel itself is undoubtedly well-written and beautiful in its descriptions. The scenes are all painted with complexity and are interesting. However, I had difficulty really sinking into the book because there were so many plot lines going on with no real resolution (or rather confusing conclusions) for them all. The book gives more the sense of trying to paint a portraiture of the interactions of a privileged white family and the decay within it, but it was difficult to truly parse out any meaning of storyline. Because of the many things happening, several of the subplots were unable to be given the full attention and depth they deserved, and I found it difficult to understand where they were coming from and leading to. Beautifully written in pieces, but difficult to take in as a whole.

Thanks to the publishers for an advance digital copy in exchange for a fair review!