Snow Island

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JAN 28, 2002

Wartime disrupts the lives of the inhabitants of a New England islet off the coast of Rhode Island in this graceful debut novel. The men of Snow Island engage in the dangerous business of quahogging, and their families eke out a living running small businesses that depend on the wealthier summer residents for survival. Alice Daggett is 16 years old in 1941. She attends school in a one-room schoolhouse with twins Lydia and Pete Giberson, the only companions her age on the island, and has shouldered the responsibility of keeping the family store running since the death of her father five years earlier. The summer season of 1941 gets off to its usual start with the arrival of mysterious loner George Tibbits, who makes his annual pilgrimage to the houses his aunts owned when he was a boy site of a tragedy from which he has never quite recovered. While the rebellious Lydia spends her time with the summer in-crowd, Alice secretly becomes close to Ethan Cunningham, the 26-year-old lighthouse keeper with artistic ambitions. The quiet off-season life of the island changes dramatically after Pearl Harbor: a navy base opens, and Alice and Lydia now spend their free time plane spotting. After Ethan enlists soon followed by Pete and Lydia Alice is left alone to grapple with the consequences of her relationships and her growing sense of self. The story elements here may be familiar, and the inner motivations of some characters (George Tibbits, in particular) remain vague despite explication, but Towler's strength is her deft rendering of time and place. Lyrical and gentle, Alice's wartime coming-of-age and the island itself continues to resonate after the last page.