Homeport Press just published Our Lady of the Dunes, my coming-of-age novel, which takes place amid the dunes of the OuterCape of Provincetown, MA, in 1942.
The dunes run along the beach nearly 40 miles, from Chatham to Provincetown, and just above them are bluffs that overlook the Atlantic Ocean.
My story is of a young woman who’s sent out from Boston to live among the wind-swept dunes, and finds that World War II encroaches even along this lonely landscape.
I started the novel in 2006, when I was awarded a writing fellowship and invited to stay in the Margo-Gelb shack by the Outer Cape Artists in Residence Consortium (OCARC). Six residencies are awarded each year to artists and writers during the late spring and summer months.
During my two-week stay, I completed the first 250 pages of my manuscript on a portable manual typewriter.
While there, I started thinking differently about things that I generally take for granted. The shacks have no electricity or running water, so I didn’t use as much of the latter because I had to pump it, and walk up a dune with every gallon I pumped!
I arrived at my shack having no idea what I was going to write, but the story came to me organically, linked completely to the seaside space that I inhabited during my time there.
Our Lady of the Dunes is available in paperback and ebook formats online and from local independent booksellers.
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