SAVING TUNA STREET

There’s a reason Blanche Murninghan’s cousin Jack calls her “Bang.” When she gets mad, it’s an event to rival a Santa Maria Island sunset—and it happens about as often. Right now, her irritation has two distinct sources. First, shady entrepreneur Sergi Langstrom is taking his dog-and-pony show to town hall, trying to persuade the islanders that the pink-and-turquoise mall and designer homes his company plans to build will increase the value of their more modest properties. The last thing Blanche wants is overscaled monstrosities crowding her shorefront cabin on Tuna Street, where she lived with her grandma Maeve after her mother’s death and where she continues to live even after Maeve’s passing—and she doesn’t mind looking Sergi in his Bradley Cooper blue eyes to tell him so. But even as she fulminates over Sergi’s machinations, a second blow falls. Bob Blankenship is found in his car with a broken neck. Blanche teams up with Liza Kramer, Bob’s partner in Sunny Sands Realty, to see who might have had it in for her longtime friend. She also seeks solace from her grandma’s former beau, Donald Nicholas “Cap” Reid. Cousin Jack, now headquartered in Chicago, makes a timely reappearance. And Blanche meets Haasi, a young Miccosukee woman who seems to live everywhere and nowhere and who teaches Blanche to listen in a whole new way. Sullivan gives a lively bunch of players their due, but when the narrative strays from Blanche, her incandescent prose flickers. It’s Blanche alone who puts the bang in the book, and her debut should make readers sit up and take notice.

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