NEED TO KNOW<\/p>\n
Rachel Beanland<\/a>‘s own experience as a “military brat” set the stage for her upcoming novel, The Half Life.\n<\/p>\n PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the cover of The Half Life<\/a>, set for release this summer.\n<\/p>\n The novel follows Eileen O\u2019Malley, 23, who is swept off her feet by naval officer Paul Archer and the two quickly wed. The marriage and Paul’s military service transports them to La Maddalena, a Mediterranean island where the officer “will be heading up Radiological Controls aboard a submarine tender,” according to a book description.\n<\/p>\n Once there, Eileen enmeshes herself in a community of other Navy wives, settling into life on the island through Italian lessons and cooking. “She begins to love the place for all the ways it is not like where she comes from,” the synopsis reads.\n<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a> to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer\u200b\u200b, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n It’s not quite paradise though, when possible nuclear contamination is detected in the water. Says the description: “Eileen\u2019s marriage strains and her loyalties begin to shift as she is drawn into a web of secrets \u2014 and to a local journalist who forces her to imagine a life beyond the one she’s been handed.”\n<\/p>\n Beanland, who is also the pen behind The House Is on Fire<\/a> and Florence Adler Swims Forever<\/a>, spent time on La Maddalena during her youth, she tells PEOPLE.<\/p>\n “As a kid, I moved eight times, went to 11 different schools, lived abroad twice and was perennially ‘the new girl,’ ” Beanland says. “[La Maddalena] is a huge tourist destination now, known for its rugged landscape and turquoise water, but in the early 1970s, during the Cold War, the United States and Italy signed a secret accord, allowing the U.S. to moor a submarine tender there.”\n<\/p>\n Beanland’s father was a supply officer in the U.S. Navy, and was stationed in La Maddalena from 1986 to 1988.<\/p>\n “From my point of view, those two years were idyllic ones,” she says. “Because I was a kid, I never wondered why we were really in Sardinia, or whether the Sardinian people wanted us there. Only later did I understand that my idyllic childhood had actually been a lot more complicated \u2014 and contentious \u2014 than I realized.”\n<\/p>\n The Half Life.<\/p>\n Simon & Schuster<\/p>\n Like Beanland’s own reflections, Eileen is confronted with the complexities of being an American abroad, the book’s synopsis says.\n<\/p>\n The author is “excited for the world to meet Eileen Archer,” who has been thrust into a whole new reality. “She’s slowly coming to understand more about the Navy\u2019s mission and its impact on the island,” says Beanland.\n<\/p>\n Rachel Beanland.<\/p>\n Tania del Carmen Fern\u00e1ndez<\/p>\n Simon & Schuster describes the book as “atmospheric, sexy and quietly defiant.”\n<\/p>\n “Writing this book allowed me to not only write a love story, but to write a love letter to La Maddalena,” Beanland tells PEOPLE. “It also allowed me to capture some of my parents’ experiences on the island, and to pay tribute to the Navy community, and in particular the ‘Navy wives,’ who supported my mother and helped raise us kids during my father\u2019s prolonged absences.”\n<\/p>\n