Under the Eye of the Storm

Book excerpt: Dr. Tom Medlar’s sailboat, the Harmony, is his pride and joy, and the focus of more lavish and meticulous care than he affords to either his career or his marriage. But then one day Tom takes his wife, Audrey, and their friends, Flick and Dottie Hamden, out for a pleasure cruise and into the unexpected path of a hurricane. As the deadly storm rages around them, the fault lines in the friendships and marriages begin to crack, and John Hersey’s riveting adventure story rapidly becomes something deeper and more unsettling. Widely praised on its initial publication in 1967, Under the Eye of the Storm remains a masterpiece of psychological fiction from one of the most accomplished authors of the twentieth century.