Izzy Monroe has lost herself. Three months after an accident that damaged a portion of her brain, she isolates herself in her parent’s home on Chappaquiddick Island, on the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard.
She has spent her life in the world of academia, working on a doctorate in literature at Harvard, but now with her short-term memory gone, she has to give up her dreams. Her emptiness and doubt have left her rudderless and deeply depressed.
When her former college roommate, Maria, suggests she intern at Portarello, Maria’s grandfather’s self-sustaining farm in the Italian countryside, Izzy isn’t immediately convinced she can make the journey alone much less work at the successful inn and thriving farm. However, Izzy remembers the peace she felt there on the one visit she and Maria made years ago, and she knows this is her only chance to regain any sense of normalcy.
Daniel Richetelli, a Jesuit priest and Maria’s cousin, is facing a crisis himself. After ten years of self-sacrifice, he has lost his faith and is desperate to find a new path.
He knows his grandfather can help him find his way, so he leaves the Church and goes to Portarello. A chance encounter with Izzy leaves him reeling. In her, he feels he has found that for which he is searching, but the guilt of his physical attraction to her and the criticism of his sister, Linda, make him once again question who he really is. Meanwhile, Izzy hasn’t felt so much like her old self since the accident. The farm and Daniel are bringing her back to life, but she fears his past will forever stand in the way of their happiness.
The search for self is the central theme of the novel.
Izzy remembers the strength she had prior to the accident. She was adventurous and outgoing, a lifelong learner. Not even a disability left over from her bout with childhood polio could keep Izzy down. Half-Wampanoag, half-Irish, Izzy was a warrior from the beginning. She was fearless. Now, she knows she is hiding from this new Izzy, a woman who doubts herself and cannot see past her brain damage to the new life she must build. She is scared to risk the possibility of failure and pain, but Maria convinces her she cannot rediscover herself without taking the risk.
When she does finally gather the courage to leave her hovering, protective family, she thinks she must keep her inability to remember a secret from the other interns and Maria’s family. She hopes to reinvent herself among strangers and the physical labor of farm life. That journey to self-discovery feels like stepping off the edge of the world, and finding to courage to take that step is a part of reclaiming her life.
Though she cannot truly interact with the other interns or inn guests because of her memory, she plays the part in yet another step toward normalcy.
Izzy is amazed by the power she finds in physical labor. Working in the vegetable gardens and tending to the pigs form a sense of connection as her brain begins to heal and form new pathways. This also leads to a deeper appreciation for her Native American heritage, a deeper contemplation of the natural world – a world so foreign to her after years spent in study and academics.
Her immediate attraction to Daniel and the physical relationship they share also give her purpose.
United in their vulnerability, the two draw on and strengthen each other. Daniel’s path to the farm began with a forced leave of absence from the Church. He struggles with Jesuit ideology to find God in everything. In fact, he can find his maker in nothing recently. He is not looking forward to the mental grilling his grandfather will give him, but he knows it is the only way to truly rediscover himself. He lacks Izzy’s courage, though, and doesn’t immediately face his indecision.
Daniel recognizes a mystical power within Izzy, likely from her brush with death, and he is inexplicably drawn to that power. The guilt he feels over his fascination with her and his lack of courage nearly push him to self-destruction, and it is only her love that pulls him back from the brink. She gives him the freedom to be himself, and he gives her the freedom to face her new limitations.
Just like the archaeological dig occurring on the farm, the two must uncover the treasures buried beneath layers of doubt and uncertainty, and just as those artifacts show a connection to the past, Daniel and Izzy must use their pasts to create a new future.
Mae Keaney is looking for a way back to her childhood, back to safety, and finds it in a property on Chappaquiddick Island. A wind-tattered cottage and an old boathouse she envisions as a café will be her haven, as long as she can keep her regrets and sorrows hidden.