The Mail Boat

About this book

Sorrel Island, Maine, population one hundred and nineteen in winter, has three institutions: the store, the church hall, and the boat. The Harriet Q has carried the island's mail, groceries, gossip, medicine and homecomings for seventy years, under three captains, the latest being Alma Snow, seventy seven, who can read the bay the way other people read a kitchen. Cora Fenn, thirty six, is the island's postmistress, fourth of her line, keeper of the little post office with its brass wickets, its woodstove, and its locked bottom drawer that every postmistress hands to the next with the same instruction: never throw a letter away. The sea gives things back. Be ready to finish the delivery.