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An enchanting debut novel exploring second chances and blossoming romance in a charming port town in Maine, perfect for fans of J. Courtney Sullivan's The Cliffs and Catherine Newman's Sandwich.
Just about everything has gone wrong for Gwen Gilmore over the past year. She's lost her mother, her teaching job, and been dumped by her—albeit not that great—long-term boyfriend. Adrift and out of options, she packs her life into her barely functioning car and makes the lonely drive north, to the only place she can think of going: her family's aging cottage on the Maine coast, Periwinkle, which she's recently inherited.
The cottage and Port Anna, the foggy Maine town of Gwen's childhood, are unchanged in many ways. For Gwen, they are full of the ghosts of her past—boyfriends, forgotten creative dreams, and painful memories of a sister lost too young. Periwinkle is also home to some more literal ghosts: The Misses, friendly spirits who have long watched over the cottage, but who now seem strangely unsettled, slamming doors and moving furniture in the night. And behind its charming façade, Port Anna has not escaped the realities of modern life. Family homes are being razed to make space for garish condos, the cottage, coveted by a relentless local realtor, is about to be condemned, and the unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl has set the town on edge. On the face of it, it's an odd place to try to make a new start.
But there are glimmers of hope everywhere, if only Gwen can open herself up to possibility. Sparks fly with Leandro, an Argentinian artist, as aloof and witty as he is wildly attractive. Old friends and former flames come out of the woodwork, bringing with them new opportunities and chances to laugh again. Even in the face of potential happiness, though, it seems some secrets refuse to stay buried. As the summer crowds return to the city and the locals hunker down for another harsh Maine winter, Gwen will be forced to make choices that will change her life forever.
"Buck skillfully weaves an immersive narrative...Readers looking for a sweet, summery outing that walks the line between romance and general fiction will want to check this out." —Publishers Weekly
"Readers looking for an escape to coastal Maine, with both its bucolic and forbidding moods, will find that here, along with the depiction of a community where everybody minds everybody else's business, and a touch of romance. A reassuring look at making peace with a rocky past and place." —Kirkus Reviews
"I suppose you could resist this lovely debut novel, but why on earth would you want to? Buck gives us a story of a woman starting her life over in an austerely beautiful village on the coast of Maine where she was once a summer person. It's a carefully- wrought portrait of a house, an intense year in a life, and of a small but complicated community that somehow, for all its layers and conflicts, comes with the magical warmth of Louise Penny's Three Pines. What a pleasure." —Beth Gutcheon, author of Leeway Cottage and More Than You Know
"An unfettered woman 'from away' seeks her own way home to Maine. Family ghosts, runaway teens, runaway real estate—Buck knows her coast." —Peter Behrens, author of The Law of Dreams and Carry Me
This information about Port Anna was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dr. Elizabeth Buck earned a PhD in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she taught for over a decade. She and her husband share three daughters, an English Cocker Spaniel, and an abiding love for the great state of Maine. Port Anna is Libby's first novel.
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