A Visit to Martha's Vineyard

 

Having just finished Jake Tapper/Alex Thompson's Original Sin,  a depressing read for its authenticity as part of the reason for America's self destruction, I was in the mood for light reading.

At Pages & Sips, A Geneva English bookstore, I spied, The Martha Vineyard Beach and Book Club by Martha Hall Kelly. I grabbed it. It's been a longtime since I've been on the Vineyard. 

I love reading about places I've been. It is a way to revisit them without going through the hassle of an airport. Boston is an example. I loved living there near all those universities, history and diversity. If I want to go "home" from the comfort of my European life, I can read a Spencer novel or watch a video of the TV series. With Kelly's book I could "take" a ferry to the Vineyard.

There have been three times, I couldn't enter the U.S.

• 9/11 - all flights were cancelled.
• When I renounced. Chuck Schumer had proposed legislation that would keep renouncers from re-entrying. The bill died early on.
• Now. Too many people are detained for something on their phones and laptops. Sometimes people such as the Australian who studied at Columbia and protested for Gaza, was pulled out of line and sent back. Neither my husband nor I am willing to try,

I suspected the book would be chick lit. But it was so much more. Set mostly in 1942, my birth year. The writing was vivid enough, and I could imagine the houses although they were in a past time period. I felt sand between my toes and smelled sea air.

My only memory of WWII was the end when everyone was celebrating. I didn't know what a war was, but I knew it was better over. My other memory was bags of a white substance with a red dot and it was my job to massage the red dot through the white stuff until it turned yellow and we'd spread it on bread like butter.

The fake butter wasn't in the book and there were things like worry about Nazi submarines off shore and gas rationing that I was too little to be aware of. 

The story interwove love, loss, treachery, loyalty and strong characters true to their time.

I will probably never again step on the streets and sand of the Vineyard but in the couple of days I took to read the book, I was there.  

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