To the New Owners: A Martha's Vineyard Memoir

To the New Owners: A Martha's Vineyard Memoir
ISBN-10
0802189091
ISBN-13
9780802189097
Category
Biography & Autobiography
Pages
272
Language
English
Published
2017-07-04
Publisher
Atlantic Monthly Press
Author
Madeleine Blais

Description

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist “gives a familial face to the mystique of Martha’s Vineyard” in a memoir with “gentle humor and . . . elegiac sweetness” (Kirkus Reviews). A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais’s in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha’s Vineyard. A little more than two miles down a dirt road, it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. Sitting on Tisbury Great Pond—well-stocked with delicious oysters and crab—the house faced the ocean and the sky. Though improvements were made, the ethos remained the same: no heat, television, or telephone. Instead, there were countless hours at the beach, meals cooked and savored with friends, nights talking under the stars, until, in 2014, the house was sold. To the New Owners is Madeleine Blais’s “witty and charming . . . deeply felt memoir” of this house, and of the Vineyard itself, from the history of the island and its famous visitors, to the ferry, the pie shops, the quirky charms and customs, and the abundant natural beauty. But more than that, this is an elegy for a special place—a retreat that held the intimate history of her family (The National Book Review).

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