Book Review from Mary S. at the Library

This book is not something I typically read. I was intrigued because it is set on a tiny, remote island in the Chesapeake Bay and I grew up in Maryland. My Pap Pap built a house on St. Clements Bay that my Grandmother was raised in, off the Potomac River, and we vacationed there every summer growing up. I just had to read this book for the nostalgia alone.

The next thing to draw me in was that every resident on this tiny island is pretending that the husband of Piper Parrish is not only still alive, but typically right next to her wherever she goes. Piper’s husband, Tom, died when his crabbing boat capsized and sank during a storm and after a few days Piper woke up, made him breakfast, and walked him down to the dock to see him off; just as she did every day before his death. The other watermen were confused but just assumed Piper was grieving in her own way. Except she showed up that afternoon to welcome Tom home, requested a table for two that evening for dinner, and had an entire conversation with an empty chair. It continued on this way for so long that the residents’ initial reaction of going along with Piper’s delusion until she snapped out of it trapped them. No one wanted to break sweet Piper’s heart all over again.

Enter Anders Caldwell. He is a journalist for a tiny paper with big dreams of being Clark Kent. Not Superman. He wants to be the type of journalist Clark Kent was. He also has a podcast on the side he’s been trying, unsuccessfully, to grow and he’s just kind of surviving. He is sent to Frick Island to cover the annual Cake Walk and is so painfully out of place. He writes the Cake Walk article and shortly after is sent an anonymous email that there is a “bigger story” on the island he missed. So he goes back every weekend to see if he can unearth it – and maybe see the beautiful, interesting woman he saw in the restaurant talking to an empty chair again. But how do you approach someone you’re interested in when they think their dead spouse is still alive?

The push and pull of Piper and Anders was frustrating. But even more frustrating was Piper herself. Does she really think her husband is still alive? Is Tom still alive and pulling strings behind the scenes? And why is an entire village complicit in one person’s delusion so much so that they speak to Tom every day and serve him in the restaurant?!

I loved this book for taking me back to a place I haven’t been in over a decade. I loved the Maryland vernacular. I especially loved the chapter where the women of the village are gossiping while picking crabs. The story was a little too sweet romance novel for me but I enjoyed the book overall.

Check out The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley from the Library (https://catalog.lclibs.org/polaris/search/title.aspx…).