The Philadelphia Inquirer said of Susan

Kenney s novel In Another Country that it

"may signal the most breathtaking literary

achievement of the year," and Anne Tyler

wrote that Kenney "has created a dis-

tinguished novel." Sailing. a sequel to

that book, is an even more moving portrayal

of enduring love and courage in the face of

mortality. In its pages Sara and Phil Boyd,

the married couple of her earlier novel,

together and individually struggle over

the course of several years to survive the

physical and mental upheaval of Phil s life-

threatening illness. It is a novel of great

emotional power, poignant beauty-

glorious prose on sailing itself graces the

book- and astonishing intimacy. By the end

of Sailing one knows the absolute best and

worst about Phil and Sara, and understands

how desperate circumstances can elicit the

frantic, terrified worst and the stoical, heroic

best from two ordinary people. Here is a

portrait of a marriage whose inspiration

rings utterly true, for what husband and wife

will not see themselves, again and again, in

Phil and Sara?

For Sara, sailing was first a gift to Phil,

an earnest symbol of her belief that he

would survive the crisis of his mortal ill-

ness another summer; later it becomes

a sign of their increasing distance. For Phil,

sailing is both self-discovery and escape -

from his fears, his sense of being a one-man

medical research project, and from Sara s

constant vigilance; ultimately his lonely

personal voyage will become a literal one.

For readers, Sailing will be an experience

never to be forgotten, an indelible work of

literary art and emotional wisdom and

understanding. It confirms Susan Kenney s

stature as a novelist.of uncommon accom-

plishment and brilliant human insight.