From My Bottom Step

Beach Music is about Jack McCall, an American living in Rome with his young daughter, trying to make peace after the recent shock of his wife’s suicide. But his loneliness is disturbed by the appearance of his sister-in-law, who begs him to return home to his dying mother, and of two school friends asking for his help in tracking down another classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester and never resurfaced. These requests catapult Jack on a journey that takes in the past and the present in both Europe and the American South, and that leads him to shocking and eventual liberating facts.