In the summer of 1971
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 who, like them, were drawn to the drama and beauty of Maine’s midcoast. Every summer for more than forty years, they made the long trek up the Atlantic seaboard until the trip was no longer feasible. Because they had no children, their home eventually passed to a nephew, who, in turn, sold it and all of the contents to my parents.
We came to learn a lot about these women from the objects they left behind. We slept in their beds, under their blankets, took their towels onto the beach, read their books, and studied their photograph albums. We were amused by the makeshift plays they staged, commiserated as they bailed their old wooden rowboat, sighed with pleasure at the sight of tall-masted sailboats on the horizon, and smiled when they brought home two tiny kittens, Perry and Winkle, named for their beloved cottage. In short, we bore witness to their lives, to the love they shared for each other, and for the tiny slice of heaven they’d built on top of a wide granite ledge facing the sea.
Given their profound attachment to the place, it came as no surprise that they chose to remain behind, invisible but sometimes noisy presences. My brother, barely a toddler, was the first to notice. “Who is here?” he asked my mother, pushing aside his pacifier. She opened her mouth to tell him, “No one,” until she heard the thumping, too. They were never angry or disruptive. Merely opinionated. They disliked it when their books were moved. And they stomped in frustration when a new primary bedroom was added. But eventually, the noises abated. We learned to live together. That is, until my parents’ marriage dissolved, and the cottage was again for sale.
“Port Anna,” my first published novel, is an homage to that cottage, to the two women who first loved it, and to a family that had been so happy there. It is my fervent hope that I have captured some of the magic of that place and time so that you can feel it, too.
