Rehoboth Reimagined

A collection of short stories and poems inspired by turn of the 20th century photographs archived at the Rehoboth Beach Historical Society and Museum.

For more than a century, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware has been a respite for city-dwellers from Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; Wilmington, Delaware; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and beyond. Fourteen unattributed, vintage photographs prompted Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild members to reimagine life in the early days of this charming seaside town: The 1899 Falmouth wreck sparks a short story of love and bravery from one writer, as well as poems from two others. A tale of deception and intrigue is triggered by a man holding an umbrella. The old Pennsy train figures prominently in several stories. One 1916 photo of friends on the beach so sparked the imagination of writers that the collection includes six short stories inspired by the photo. This collection of eighteen short stories and ten poems brings to life friends, family, disaster and love as it may have happened more than one hundred years ago in the picturesque town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

If I’d known it would be my final hours in that body, would I have stopped to savor the last flavors of life?—“Captured” by Linda Federman

…the whispering ocean, the hot metallic sand, the flat clean light of the shoreline all brought me the girl I’d been seven years before and the boy who I loved, thought I loved, and who existed no more.—“Cottages” by Anne Colwell

Hanging from a rope thirty feet above the water...would test the mettle of any man on a good day. To do it in the teeth of a Nor’easter might be beyond their limits.—“The Wreck” by Bill Hicks

The sea’s soft symphony paced their steps.—“Seaside Footsteps” by Mary Ellen South

…I wandered along the last wrack line. The autograph of the sea, I liked to call it. It always told a story.—“The Storm” by Ellen Collins

…I began to notice the aroma. It was an alien scent but one I instinctively knew was the ocean.—“The Ocean Virgins” by Jessica Gordon

The Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild (RBWG), established in November 2004, is a non-profit 501c(3) organization dedicated to the fostering of the literary arts in Southern Coastal Delaware. We are authors, journalists, teachers, retired professors of literature, memoirists, archivists, actors, editors, stand-up comics, songwriters and photographers. Just Plain folk. We've been seen in regional, national and international literary journals, trade magazines, and newspapers. We read our work at literary venues, attend writers' conferences, book festivals, retreats or fairs. We take writing classes, struggle with writers block and rejection letters, dream of what it would be like to have enough time to write, to get published. Some of us have done this too - had books or chapbooks published by large New York companies, by small independent presses, by self-publishers. Writing is about taking risks. It's about challenges, about unpredictability, about change. And because it's about those things, it's exciting, at times frightening. Our crashing wave catches just that.