Elizabeth C Ward

Tenant A Cape Cod Journal. The Novel Elizabeth C Ward

SUMMARY:

Truro, Cape Cod

The tenant arrived out of nowhere like some odd migratory bird blown off course, alighting briefly on this small, wind-swept spit of land, and then disappeared as mysteriously as she had come.

The woods along the Pamet are filled with ghosts. Are there at times recalcitrant souls left accidentally behind? Does on occasion one of them slip through the crack between life and death, return for one brief stretch of time?

The journal Isabel leaves behind is a record of Truro after the summer people have gone: the turn of leaves, the first snow, hunters, bearded men in winter lairs, of wild Deirdre and mooncussers, a brutal invasion of the sea; the kindness of the descendants of pilgrims who first settled there. It is a record of dunes and sea, of love and loss. Isabel's fragile and lovely ode to life.