This multi-generational story follows mother and granddaughter through the years, anchoring each in the idyllic town of Haven Point. Told in alternating viewpoints, we see how Haven Point has weighed into each of them throughout the years.
As a New Englander, the setting is appealing. I’m a fan of historical fiction, and I requested to read this from St. Martin’s because the blurb showed the timeline through two wars and beyond. It feels like a reach calling this historical fiction. While mentioning things in each generation is historical, the book is definitely more women’s fiction. I found myself drawn into Maren’s story the most, though Skye’s story is interesting too.
I confess to skimming pages occasionally when the book got repetitive in the day-to-day or the descriptions that didn’t feel necessary. But I gave this book 4-stars for a reason, and it’s because the storyline is a good read. I appreciate Hume tackled some heavy issues in a way that was relatable to the reader. Overall, this is an enjoyable read.
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Haven Point is available on Amazon for $14.99.
About the Book:
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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