WHERE ARE YOU?

Two former lovers reunite at the site of their decades-ago romance on a deserted moor in this sequel.

In Dempster’s (Chapel on the Moor, 2014) preceding novel, a young man named Frank Dole and a young woman called Merritt Geary are fascinated by the restoration of an old stone chapel built on an island’s wild moor far from the nearest village. Frank and Merritt also become captivated with each other, and the kind of torrid romance blossoms that readers have been conditioned to think will last a lifetime, even if the chapel doesn’t survive that first book. The sequel opens with the dashing of those expectations. Fifty years have passed since that original adventure; Frank married a woman named Sandra and settled down in San Francisco and Merritt likewise wed. The two have kept in touch only sporadically and superficially—but that changes when Frank receives an email from Merritt proposing that they meet. She’s recently lost her husband to cancer in Italy, and she’s coming to the United States for a class reunion and would like to see Frank before she goes back to Europe. A patiently elaborated story flows naturally from this ordinary beginning, a moody tale that will take the vivid characters to Boston, New York, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, and will also return them, inevitably, to their past on the moor all those decades ago. Dempster writes with an easy, approachable narrative voice. But it sometimes becomes burdened with ridiculous elements, as when Frank’s wife, during a discussion about a woman her husband hasn’t seen in 50 years, says, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Frank,” or when the author attempts to reproduce a New England accent (“You folks was so excited when you came home talkin’ about yoah discovery, it clean slipped my mind to mention this phone call I got earliah”). In addition, Bostonians will wince at the mention of “Boston Commons.” Still, fans of the previous book should be intrigued by this unexpected kind of sequel.

A slow-boiling but richly atmospheric exploration of late-life love and regret.