Whatever May Come (ePub)

Evangeline Gerard lost her virginity just as her mother drowned at sea in the first story of Michael Ellis Taylor's sweeping family saga. Whatever May Come follows the complicated lives and loves of the Alexandre brothers and their lifelong connection to Evangeline. Spanning locations across the globe, but set largely in a wealthy African American enclave on the island of Martha's Vineyard, where whispers of the sea carry secrets untold, their story explores identity, race, and the unyielding grip of fate.

Evangeline and Joaquin Alexandre are childhood best friends, growing ever closer through tragedies and joys. But as they come of age along sandy beaches and rolling surf where careless days are remembered and lost dreams mourned, the choices of their youth pull them all in different directions. Eldest brother Matthew burns with ambition, coveting Evangeline and success in equal measure. Christian, the middle son, finds fleeting solace chasing disasters across continents, but cannot outrun his conflicted feelings about their collective past. And Evangeline struggles under the weight of her own yearning and guilt as a daughter. After a series of wrenching partings and missed chances, they discover hard-won epiphanies: that some promises demand breaking to unveil elusive redemption, that some truths demand honor despite steep costs, and that the unrelenting sea forever links us to those leaving traces within our soul.

Taylor's crisp collection of vignettes spanning decades form an intricate tapestry illuminating both the soaring highs and wracking lows of human experience. Beautifully wrought and infused with emotional nuance, this expansive multi-generational epic reveals damaged yet sympathetic people who strive and stumble yet never fully relinquish hope, poignantly explores the complications tying loved ones together across time and distance, and what it truly means to come home.