
The Sea Is Quiet Tonight
A Memoir
by Michael H. Ward
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Pub Date Nov 01 2016 | Archive Date Apr 05 2017
Description
In this insightful and inspirational memoir, Michael Ward returns to the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when so little was known and so few who were diagnosed survived. He chronicles in candid detail his partner Mark’s decline and eventual death. By looking back on these devastating events, the author not only honors a generation lost to the illness but also opens a vital window onto the past, before medication helped save lives and when HIV/AIDS was usually a death sentence.
Advance Praise
"Michael Ward’s book presents a realistic and insightful portrayal of the early AIDS epidemic in Boston. I was especially moved by the vivid descriptions of love and loss expressed at Mark’s memorial service." Jerome Groopman, MD, Staff writer in Medicine and Biology for The New Yorker
"Over three decades ago, just when we were all learning about AIDS, Michael Ward and his lover experienced firsthand the uncertainty, fear, and heartbreak of the disease. It is essential that we not forget these early days of the AIDS crisis. Thank goodness Michael is here to remind us of the human cost of those days in this moving, deeply personal, and beautifully written book." Ken Harvey, author of A Passionate Engagement and If You Were With Me Everything Would Be All Right
"The Sea Is Quiet Tonight is about so much more than life and death. It's a story about how relationships survive when death is close. It's a story about community. While no relationship is without its difficulties and challenges, this wonderful memoir presents a searingly honest portrayal of life and love, of decency and strong ties. It asks all the right questions within the frame of a fraught relationship. The writing is tight and clean, and the prose is never maudlin. Michael Ward has written from the heart about a wonderful, terrible time in his life, and in so doing he’s honored Mark Halberstadt’s memory." Catherine Parnell, Senior Associate Editor, Consequence magazine
"The Sea Is Quiet Tonight is beautifully written, a deeply affecting story." Helene Atwan, Director, Beacon Press
"Sometimes what matters most is the story under the story. Maybe you think you know the story of the AIDS crisis and its devastations in this country. But inside that story are the kind of guiding, soul level stories we need so much now: about how to be a true friend, how love takes apart our fondest dreams of what’s supposed to happen, and ultimately how to grow up as human beings. Michael Ward’s The Sea is Quiet Tonight gives us both the outside and the inside stories. I read it in two sittings, riveted, nourished by the honest, sad, funny, beautiful truth of what unfolded for the author and his beloved and their friends and family. I won’t forget this book." Sherry Ruth Anderson, author of Ripening Time: Inside Stories for Aging with Grace
"Profoundly evocative of a time when hilarity and high camp gave way to unimaginable horror. Enter into these pages, if you dare. For those of us who lived to tell the story, Michael Ward calls forth the memory of the beauty, the dread, the terror, and the extraordinary ways we cared for one another." Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie, Senior Minister, Arlington Street Church (UUA), Boston
Marketing Plan
THE SEA IS QUIET TONIGHT - Michael H. Ward
Publication Date: November 2016 - Memoir, LGBT
Querelle Independent, a division of Querelle Press
Paperback 189 pages, US $19.99 ISBN: 978-0-9967103-3-6
Digital 189 pages, US $12.99 ISBN: 978-0-9967103-4-3
Trim size: 6 x 9 inches
Marketing Information:
Netgalley / ARCS for booksellers / ARCS for media / ALA Outreach / Library Thing
Web marketing: blogs, social media outlets, reading groups, online targeted advertising.
Outreach to mainstream and LGBT Media, Review Copy Mailing, Excerpt Placement
Book Trailer - Reading Group Guide
Dedicated websites: www.querellepress.com, www.theseaisquiettonight.com,
www.michaelwardauthor.com
Book Tour: Boston, Provincetown, Chatham MA, Omaha, Des Moines, Madison, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Washington DC
Publicity coordinated by Michele Karlsberg Marketing & Management 917-359-2803 michelekarlsberg@me.com
Order from Ingram – 800-937-8000
About the Author: Michael H. Ward is a retired psychotherapist. He was instrumental in the development of The Shared Heart (William Morrow, 1997), which presents the portraits and coming out stories of 40 gay and lesbian teenagers. The Shared Heart won the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award in the nonfiction category in 1998. It was also on ALA's Best Books for Young Adults list in 1999. Happily married, Michael lives on Cape Cod with his husband, Moe, and cat, Jack.
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9780996710336 |
PRICE | $19.99 (USD) |
Featured Reviews

Emotional, honest, heart-wrenching account of Michael Ward and Mark Halberstadt, who meet at Fire Island in September of 1981 and fell in love. Mike is a therapist in Boston and Mark a former teacher with an uncompleted PhD in Arabic Studies, who is pursuing his dream career as a boat captain.
In March of 1983, Larry Kramer writes "1,112 and Counting" - which Michael considers "hysterical and melodramatic" and doesn't see how AIDS could relate to him at all. Soon Mark has a bad case of thrust, gets shingles and by the end of summer has a cough that will not go away. Around the time of their second anniversary Mark gets pneumocystis pneumonia and becomes the 100th person in Massachusetts to be given an AIDS diagnosis. Soon their mantra becomes "we just have to keep Mark alive until they find a cure."
Mark dies shortly after his 42nd birthday in July of 1984 and is cremated ("I don't want to be buried with this fucking virus in my body. I want every last diseased cell burned away, so all that's left is me ... just me."). At his memorial service, Michael remarks on the sailor's gravestone they had seen off a country road in Maine with the inscription "The sea is quiet tonight" and ends with "The sea will be quiet for many nights to come for you. I wish you peace on your journey, my love."
Ward writes beautifully and honestly about their relationship, his PTSD, and life after Mark's death. It's also a story of a community forged by the most horrific of circumstances. Read this book.

The discovery of HIV in the early 80's was a death sentence for the gay man.
This is just that: A heartbreaking chronicle of a man who gets the terminal diagnosis.
More than that is the love and care he receives from his partner and friends as well as his medical caretakers.
I know many people who have this devastating disease and now live their lives with simply a cocktail to keep the disease and blood counts in check.
Back in the 80 's, I worked in an oncologist office as the chemo nurse,and remember the devastation of these men who first were told it was pneumonia, then lymphoma and then being dead in a few short months.
This book was insightfully written and truly a good read for those who want to understand how this horrible Disease came to be and how far we have come.

One of the most moving books I have read this year. Having lived in the US during the 90s when AIDs still carried such a major stigma I know that Michael Ward's story has really captured the mood of the time - the fear, the panic, the sadness, the unknown. I could not put this book down and read the last few chapters with tears streaming down my face. I am so pleased that Michael was one of the lucky ones but so sad that Mark wasn't - what a brave man he was.

Ward lost his partner to AIDs in the 80's. This story follows their love story, from the sweet, exciting beginning to the unsurprising tragic end. I know little about the AIDs epidemic other than it happened and the government doesn't like to talk about it, but background information isn't necessary since at it's core this is a love story set in extreme circumstances. Ward's writing is uncomplicated and straight to the point, but he is still capable of drawing emotion from the reader. At the times I wasn't crying while reading, my eyes were still watery. I think that's the point of this book, really. To humanize an epidemic.

I have chills! As someone who grew up in the 80's in NYC and spent hours attending activism rallies with my parents, Ward gives a precise and accurate recount of the life during that time.
The story is about love, illness, and memories. Eloquently written, poetic prose. Nice pacing, great detail to secondary characters. A must read for the genre!
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