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Escaping to Love, via Literature
by Nancy Thayer

Recently, I was delighted to receive a postcard from a woman who lives in Germany. Through my books, she fell in love with Nantucket. Over the years she's traveled to Nantucket, as well as other parts of the U.S. On one trip, she met an American from New Hampshire. Now she's planning their wedding. It will be on Nantucket.

I know my German reader feels the way Lucy, a young wife and mother feels, in my novel Between Husbands & Friends: "When I think of respite from all the pressures of daily life, I think of Nantucket…. In many ways I am more myself in Nantucket than here. Or at least a different kind of self. Freer. More sensual. Less constrained. Certainly I have acted that way…. Always within me is a deep urge, a little gem of discontent, a desire to do something different, something wild…what? Dance naked in the moonlight? Well, perhaps." This novel is set in a town outside Boston and on Nantucket, and it is Nantucket where Lucy and her friend Kate remember that they are not only loving mothers and wives, but complicated sensual creatures capable of a multitude of emotions and desires.

We all need places to escape to, to dream of, to rediscover the hidden sides of our own selves. Nantucket, an island 30 miles at sea -- its beaches gleaming with water from exotic shores, its streets paved with cobblestones, its houses smothered in roses and honeysuckle -- is truly a world set apart, and a place where people come to discover, and rediscover, that secret self.

All my novels revolve around the mysteries of family life -- baffled parents and confused children, jealous siblings, stepparents, divorce -- and perhaps the most mysterious of all, love between husband and wife. At the end of An Act of Love, after a terrible conflict and revelation that has rent the McFarland family apart, Linda and her husband Owen lie together in a hotel room: "They did not speak, except to say endearments. The lives waiting for them, the difficult lives they would return to the next day… but for now they could forget all that, let it wait for them…while they focused on one another, and on what had brought them together and would keep them together, growing richer and more profound with each burdened day of each new year."

We need special places to refresh our bodies and spirits. To remember old dreams. To begin new dreams. And we need special times. During the year we observe religious and patriotic holidays. We remember presidents, heroes, our mothers and fathers. All our holidays have become commercialized. Still, it seems a valid and even valuable thing to do, to set aside one day a year to remember, simply, love. It seems appropriate that Valentine's day comes in February, like a reminder of spring in the midst of winter, a taste of pleasure in the midst of our busy daily lives.

I love to get books for Valentine's Day presents. Well, I love to get books for any kind of present. Even better, books and chocolates, but books are sufficient, and fat-free. My son's birthday falls near Valentine's Day, so I've sent him a treasure, a copy of Guy Murchie's The Seven Mysteries of Life, a profound and poetic look at our world by a scientist and philosopher. I've sent my best friend a copy of Maureen Waller's 1700, Scenes from London Life, because it transports us with deliciously juicy, earthy, vivid writing to a former time in a city we love. I'll give my husband one of Nevada Barr's mysteries, because he loves the wilderness.

And for myself? I live on Nantucket all year, so where would I like to be transported? Well, I have a passion for British mysteries. I think I'm easy to choose a book for: anything new by Reginald Hill, Robert Barnard, Dorothy Simpson, Margaret Yorke, M.C. Beaton, Deborah Crombie, Minette Walters, Nicci French, Caroline Graham, Val McDermid, Patrick McGrath, or Jill McGown. Most wonderful of all would be a new Frost book by R.D. Wingfield. If anyone can suggest another author, please email me!

And Happy Valentine's Day.

Nancy Thayer has lived on Nantucket Island for a bit more than fifteen years. Before that she taught English at various colleges and enjoyed travelling to far locales such as Helsinki, Amsterdam, and Paris. She has written twelve novels, her work has been translated into German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese. Her first novel, Stepping, was made into a 13-part series for BBC Radio. She maintains her website.

Between Husbands and Friends

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