#deerisle

In TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, Steinbeck wrote, “All I knew about Deer Isle was that there was nothing you could say about it” and, “I can’t describe Deer Isle. There is something about it that opens no door to words.” Yet I tried my best to capture it in this book.

WISHING SEASON is a love letter to the place where I grew up—to the saltwater-spruce-granite air, the pets and wild animals, and the community of storytellers that shaped me. This is my fifteenth book, but it’s the first set on Deer Isle, and I was more nervous about getting the island “right” and trying to capture the spirit of this place that means so much to me than I’ve been about anything else I’ve written. In part those nerves stem from the fact that although I was born in Maine and raised on the island, my parents and grandparents are “from away,” so I am not quite considered *from* there by many of the people I’ve known my entire life. I tried to capture the feeling of that in this book too.

So it means the world to me that early reviews have noticed that this is a book about siblings, yes, and about friendship, grief, isolation, change, and hope—but at its heart is the small Maine island where the story is set: the people and landscape that make Deer Isle a singular place. (Steinbeck again: “One doesn’t have to be sensitive to feel the strangeness of Deer Isle.”) Lily’s barn is my barn. Her tire swing was my tire swing. We skate on and catch frogs in the same pond, perch on the same granite rocks, dip our toes in the same cold ocean, love the same woods, field, and clam flats. She lives on my hill, in a house slightly different from but inspired by mine. We share a few neighbors. We pick blueberries from the same wild patch. We love the same place, for many similar reasons. I hope when you read WISHING SEASON you will love Deer Isle too.