Kent Knowles

Kent Knowles writes boys' adventure stories he despises, lives with his sister on Cape Cod, has not left the town in twenty years, and is generally agreed to be a quahaug — a clam that shuts. Then a matter of an old family debt sends him to England. Lincoln built a whole career out of one place; this is his most personal book, and Kent's cowardice is diagnosed rather than excused. Fifty-three plates by Winslow Homer and John Sloan trace the shore, the street, and the city from 1795 to 1928, matching Kent's passage from Cape Cod to London.