HAVEN POINT
Virginia Hume
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St. Martin's Press
5/11/21
Fiction
Hardcover, 384 pages
"Fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Beatriz Williams will appreciate this sweeping, multigenerational family story.”
-Booklist
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A sweeping debut novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on Maine's rocky coastline.
1944: Maren Larsen is a blonde beauty from a small Minnesota farming town, determined to do her part to help the war effort––and to see the world beyond her family’s cornfields. As a cadet nurse at Walter Reed Medical Center, she’s swept off her feet by Dr. Oliver Demarest, a handsome Boston Brahmin whose family spends summers in an insular community on the rocky coast of Maine.
1970: As the nation grapples with the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, Oliver and Maren are grappling with their fiercely independent seventeen-year-old daughter, Annie, who has fallen for a young man they don’t approve of. Before the summer is over a terrible tragedy will strike the Demarests––and in the aftermath, Annie vows never to return to Haven Point.
2008: Annie’s daughter, Skye, has arrived in Maine to help scatter her mother’s ashes. Maren knows that her granddaughter inherited Annie’s view of Haven Point: despite the wild beauty and quaint customs, the regattas, and clambakes and sing-alongs, she finds the place––and the people––snobbish and petty. But Maren also knows that Annie never told Skye the whole truth about what happened during that fateful summer.
Over seven decades of a changing America, through wars and storms, betrayals and reconciliations, Virginia Hume's Haven Point explores what it means to belong to a place, and to a family, which holds as tightly to its traditions as it does its secrets.
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Dearest Readers,
My earliest summers were spent at my grandfather’s house on Old Black Point, a summer colony on the Connecticut shore. He sold the house when I was very small, but something must have gotten into my bloodstream because I’ve always been drawn to these little communities that people return to year after year.
Among other things, they make wonderful settings for novels! Throw a fixed cast of characters together summer after summer, and you’re certain to watch the pageant of humanity play out before you. Even more if, like Haven Point, the community is on a remote peninsula, barely tethered to the mainland, both literally and figuratively.
As you immerse yourself in the rugged beauty of Haven Point, where waves hurl themselves against granite cliffs, and the weather is wild and unpredictable, I think you’ll agree that it offered the perfect backdrop to tell the Demarest family’s tumultuous story.
Warm regards,
Virginia Hume
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HAVEN POINT
Book Club Menu
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Like most things on Haven Point, clambake methodology hasn’t changed in a hundred years. Dig a deep pit above the high-water line, fill it with grapefruit-sized rocks and top it with firewood that burns for hours, before the cooking even begins. We don’t all have that kind of time (not to mention a handy beach), but fortunately, stovetop clambakes are a great substitute. And pretty easy, too —corn, potatoes, clams, mussels, and onions, all in one pot. |
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An appetizer of lobster salad on endive spears, and a simple blueberry crumble for dessert will round out your Maine-themed meal. Haven Pointers are trendier in the cocktail department, so you might consider a big batch of blueberry Moscow mules, but you can’t go wrong with a nice dry white wine, or even a cooler full of ice-cold Allagash.
-Virginia Hume
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Menu:
Appetizer: Lobster Salad on Endive Spears
Dinner: Clambake
Dessert: Blueberry Crumble
Drinks: Blueberry Moscow Mules
Dry White Wine
Allagash Beer
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