A rocky retreat

A whimsical and romantic debut novel, Libby Buck’s Port Anna is a love letter to coastal cottage life.

Having failed to start a writing career, Gwen Gilmore has also lost her safety job as a university instructor after refusing to let a mediocre student pass her course — a student who happens to be the offspring of one of the university’s top donors. Having also split from her long-term boyfriend, Gwen now finds herself without direction.

Gwen retreats to her family’s summer cottage in the small Maine town of Port Anna. The cottage, named Periwinkle, is a tiny but charming wooden structure inhabited by the literal ghosts of its former inhabitants, referred to affectionately as The Misses, though they are not sinister in any way, their hauntings little more than knocks on the walls or floors to signal mild disagreement.

The cottage does not house solely happy memories for Gwen. When she was a teenager, her younger sister Molly drowned after trying to tag along with Gwen and her boyfriend Jess, a tragedy for which Gwen continues to blame herself and that she hasn’t fully grieved. With no job or money to live anywhere else, the cottage, sitting empty since the deaths of Gwen’s parents, is her only option.

Gwen is certainly remembered in Port Anna, but receives a mixed welcome. Her former boyfriend Jess is now married to a man named Steven, who soon becomes one of Gwen’s closest friends. She also reconnects with her high school friends Hugh, now an incredibly rich real estate tycoon who still lives in town, and Aidan, who greets her with a cold distance.

There are also newer folks in town who have established themselves since Gwen last visited, including Janet, a relentless realtor who has her eyes hungrily fixed on Periwinkle cottage, and Leandro, a dreamboat artist who lives sporadically in Port Anna between gallery showings and guest lectures in university arts departments around the world. (Buck has a PhD in art history, which comes through in Leandro, the vivid descriptions of his work and what he hopes to convey through them.)

Gwen makes it through the summer, but living in the cottage becomes difficult as the colder weather sets in. Periwinkle is not winterized — there’s no heat source or insulation, and the water needs to be turned off to avoid freezing and bursting the pipes. When a possible job at the high school doesn’t pan out, Gwen’s situation becomes increasingly desperate.

The difference between vacationers with giant properties to visit at the change of each season and the more hardscrabble citizens who must endure Port Anna year-round is lightly touched on, and the exorbitance of Hugh’s wealth certainly draws attention to income inequality, but Port Anna is not the type of novel to offer a serious critique. Instead it’s a whimsical romance with the lightest touch of supernatural or fairy tale elements in The Misses, and the story of the Anna for which the town is named. Gwen certainly encounters a number of tough situations, but there isn’t much worry that she won’t find her way to a meaningful and happier conclusion.

Port Anna is a deft and promising debut with rich characters and well-balanced pace and plot. The novel is perhaps a touch more involved than a beach read, but a cozy cottage read it most certainly is. There are interesting characters and just a shade of magic realism that make this a breezy, satisfying way to spend a weekend.

Keith Cadieux is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His latest story collection Donner Parties and Other Anti-Social Gatherings is out now from At Bay Press. He also co-edited the horror anthology What Draws Us Near, published by Little Ghosts Books.