It’s Sunday, September 16, 2001. Franny and her husband have traded in their elegant Park Avenue co-op for a suite on board the Sonata, a once-glittering cruise ship with a complicated history now long past its prime. Although they’re not “cruise people,” Franny is determined to host the trip as planned because it’s her mother’s seventieth birthday, or chilsun, a major rite of passage celebrated by Korean families. But as her husband keeps pointing out, Franny and her mother aren’t close, and it’s surreal, even wrong, to be on a cruise as the death toll from the attacks on 9/11 continues to rise. Also on board is Doug, an ageing actor and former star of Starlight Voyages, the hit Love Boat--style television series famously filmed on the Sonata. With few professional prospects, Doug reluctantly joins his former castmates on a reunion cruise for fans of the show, but he dreads the dark specter of his past misdeeds. Meanwhile, Lucy, the only Black female graduate student in her department at MIT, has uncharacteristically accepted an invitation to join her roommate on the cruise at a time when she should be preparing for a job interview at a new tech company with a funny name, Google.
|
