Scupper Island

Scupper Island is named for a Whaling captain from Nantucket. It is naturally beautiful, as described in Nora’s letters, and it has a “cute” (315) downtown area. On Main Street there are apple trees and gray-shingled restaurants and shops, and throughout the island there are sanctuaries of nature, such as Lookout Rock, with its oak trees and its salty air, “sometimes thick with the promise of rain sometimes carrying smells of pipe tobacco” (64). There are picturesque coves with wooden sailboats and rocky cliffs where the rich people live. Despite its aesthetic charm, the island is cold and removed from civilization and can only be reached by ferry. The residents earn their living either by lobstering, fishing, or catering to tourists, and they “[pride] themselves on survival and toughness, bonded together by hurricanes and nor’easters, drownings and hardship” (28). Of late, many residents have relocated, “slipping away to...