Tourist Town:: A Nantucket Idyll

She awakes on Nantucket Island, not knowing where she is — or who she is — and she doesn’t want to find out. She calls herself ‘Verona,’ a name borrowed from the stern of the first boat she sees — a name she hopes will help scuttle her past. She resolves never to leave Nantucket. By staying, the likelihood of uncovering, or being confronted by her past, is negligible — or so she believes. One fog-shrouded night, however, Verona encounters an old woman sitting alone beneath the lighthouse at Sankaty Head — the daughter of a former lighthouse keeper. A diary discovered in the attic of a Victorian-era home reveals a decades-old lighthouse tragedy that will soon entangle Verona, the old woman, and a pair of tour bus drivers, who may be able to add a new chapter of Nantucket history to their tours. A New England Book Award-winning book.

Steve Sheppard is a writer, musician, songwriter, and teacher. For eight years, he was editor of Nantucket Magazine, a respected quarterly dedicated to the history, people, and culture of the island. He has written for the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Providence Journal, Cape Cod Life, and Sanctuary magazine (the award-winning journal of Mass Audubon) among other publications. He lives on Nantucket with his wife, Karin.