Liberty Island by Virginia Hume

There’s a particular kind of magic in a book that smells of sea air and old summers. Liberty Island has it in spades.

From the bestselling author of Haven Point comes a sweeping historical novel about the generations of one family who spend their summers in a seaside enclave on the rocky Maine coast. If you’ve ever lost yourself in the pages of Elin Hilderbrand, Beatriz Williams, or Sarah Blake, you’ll feel right at home here.

1900: Twenty-eight-year-old Anna Bradley spends her summer days watching over three little girls on an island off Haven Point, Maine. There, they run wild—pretending to be pirates and rum runners, treasure hunters and Roughriders. A college graduate determined never to marry, Anna secretly writes a book called “Liberty Island,” celebrating girls unshackled from the domestic sphere. It becomes a runaway bestseller. But her secret? Well. That’s another story entirely.

1922: Anna’s niece Julia, now grown, once adored those very books. Now she finds them quaint—and her childhood summers more exile than liberation. When her mother calls her urgently back to Haven Point, Julia must reconsider everything she thought she’d left behind.

This is an ode to mothers and daughters, to friendship, and to the countless ways women define freedom on their own terms. A saga that spans the tumultuous opening decades of the twentieth century.

We’re especially fond of this one. It’s penned by a Maine author, and reading it feels like coming home to the coast.

A hardcover worth lingering over on a rainy afternoon. Pour the tea. Listen for the ocean. Settle in.

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