When I began writing “Port Anna” in the summer of 2020, I wasn’t sure when—or if—I would get back to Maine. There was so much fear surrounding any interaction with strangers that the distance between North Carolina and Maine seemed too vast and too fraught to travel....
In the summer of 1971, my parents bought a small cottage near Rockland, Maine. Built by two Bryn Mawr professors, the simple shingled structure had been designed as a summer residence, a retreat where they could entertain friends and family. Sometimes, to make ends meet, they took in boarders, others...