Meet Jill Ocone, author of Enduring the Waves on Monday, June 24h at 11am!
Jill Ocone
About Jill:
Jill Ocone has been a senior writer and editor for Jersey Shore Magazine/Jersey Shore Publications since 2014 and a high school English/communications teacher since 2001. Enduring the Waves is her debut novel. She served as guest editor for Red Penguin Books’ About Time: A Coming of Age Poetry Anthology, published in February 2024. Her work has also been published in Beach Badge Magazine (Issue 4, 2023); The Windward Review (Volume 19, 2021); Read Furiously’s anthology Stay Salty: Life in the Garden State; Red Penguin Books’ Where Flowers Bloom, the leaves fall and ‘Tis the Season: Poems for Your Holiday Spirit; American Writers Review-A Literary Journal (2022, 2020 and 2019); and The Sun, among others. She is an alumnus of the Yale Writers’ Workshop (2019). Jill enjoys making memories with her nieces and nephews, yoga and meditative writing, seeing new places, and sharing her Jersey Shore home with her husband. Learn more about Jill at jillocone.com.
Enduring the Waves
As Waterville High School’s newest English teacher, Kelly Lynch befriends fellow educator and James Joyce enthusiast Shannon Moran. While Kelly grapples with deep scars from her past, she struggles to balance her active life as a teacher and her stagnant marriage to shiftless alcoholic Wayne Coopersmith. Shannon’s encouragement resurrects Kelly’s passion for writing, while Kelly inspires Shannon to pursue her lifelong dream of studying in Dublin, Ireland.
After two devastating events fracture Kelly’s life, she searches for meaning in her grief by following a trail of mysterious clues that guide her from the New Jersey shore to Dublin.
Sparks ignite her long-dormant creativity and a raging inferno in her heart while on the Emerald Isle as two unsuspecting Dubliners combine forces to hearten Kelly’s awakening. She returns home to the Jersey Shore having endured the waves spurred by her past, present, and future and ready to pursue her true calling.