CAPE MAY

This young couple’s September honeymoon in Cape May got so
boring they almost went home early. If only.

Henry and Effie got married a few months after high school
graduation in their 1950s Georgia hometown and have come to while away two
weeks in Effie’s uncle’s house, the site of fondly remembered summer visits all
through her childhood. Unfortunately, Effie “had not understood what
‘off-season’ meant,” and Henry’s no help—he’s never been north of Atlanta.
Sadly, the “old clerk at the grocer’s seemed as happy to see them as they
were to see him.” At least they have the delicious problem of losing their
virginities, and then their inhibitions, with the help of Uncle George’s
well-stocked liquor cabinet. But after several days, the sad, lonely feel of
the town starts to get to them. They are planning to leave a week early when
they notice lights on down the street and decide to stop by. The effusive woman
who answers the door turns out to be someone Effie knows, a friend of her much
older cousin—actually, someone she hated. But before she can get Henry out of
there, gin is being poured, dinner is being served, and a gang of people,
including everyone from older men in tuxedos, beatniks, Coast Guard cadets, and
a naked toddler, is boogeying it up in the living room. Higher on gin and
excitement than she’s ever been in her life, Effie decides running into Clara
Strauss was not such a bad thing after all. The couple becomes completely
infatuated with this decadent, sexy, cosmopolitan crowd, in the process falling
down a rabbit hole with life-changing consequences. Deceptively relaxed and
simple at first, the novel seems to be an easygoing trip down Memory Lane. It
soon reveals itself as a swirling vortex of psychological suspense with
insights about marriage that recall writers like Margot Livesey and Alice
Munro.

The 1950s setting, the pellucid prose, and the
propulsive plot make this very steamy debut novel about morality and
desire feel like a classic.