Salto mortal

What would it be like to impersonate a stranger, infiltrate their marriage, their home, and their way of life? F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives, but Somersault is precisely that: the story of an imposter who gains access to everything that fate had denied him: love, luxury, prestige, and professional success. Our protagonist is a merchant seaman, a rebellious drifter living hand to mouth, oblivious to the troubles of others, fleeing a provincial life. During World War II, the ship he works on is tragically wrecked. He survives miraculously, but as a result of an explosion, he loses all traces of his personal identity—name, a recognizable face, fingerprints—and ends up adrift in the vastness of the ocean. Rescued almost against his will and with his body covered in burns, he must choose who and what he wants to be, something he resists until a woman visits him in the hospital and claims to be his wife.