THE WASHASHORE

In Highet and Jones’ historical novel, a newly orphaned teenage girl is sent to live with her estranged aunt half a country away.

The year is 1929. Raised on a hardscrabble plot in Nebraska, 16-year-old Emily Cartwright is your typical farm girl—she can slaughter chickens, build a barn, you name it—until the untimely death of her mother, Constance, leaves her parentless. Without any other options, she is sent off to live with her estranged aunt, Isabel, on remote Martha’s Vineyard. The seaside New England setting is a shock to Emily’s system, as is her aunt’s house, which is also home to a small Irish family of servants, including the housekeeper’s daughter, Fiona—another teenage girl, and Emily’s first friend out East. Things at the Isabel Hewett home—known as “Hydrangea House”—are tense for several reasons, not the least of which is that Isabel had a daughter—also named Emily—who disappeared one day a few years prior while fishing. (Though some of her personal effects were later found, she has never been located.) The “First Emily,” as she is known, is not the only person to go missing at sea in this novel: Isabel’s close friend Ann Simpson has disappeared while out for a routine sail, and Isabel is convinced foul play is afoot. As Emily wonders how she will pass her days in her new home, Isabel recruits her to serve as something like a private detective on Ann’s case, which will thrust her into the depths of the Prohibition-era rum-running world. Highet and Jones’ setting is rich with both temporal and geographic details, and some of the best writing conveys Emily’s early, fish-out-of-water impressions of New England: “She was repelled by the angles and alleys, the denseness of the architecture disappearing into the sea mist and coming night. It was all just too strange and close together.” With a compelling “whodunit” aspect to the narrative and a protagonist both lovable and memorable, this work is a strong entry in the historical fiction genre.

A quick-moving seaside mystery with a rich setting populated by characters readers won’t soon forget.