Summer Magic A Memoir of Childhood Summers on Cape Ann [Massachusetts] [Hardcover] Mary Wallace and Ray Cruz

Description

“They were Summers of the senses. Softened, muted, gentle senses that gave beauty to the eye, music to the year, and the silken feel of sand and water to the touch. They were pockets of memory, sealed and complete in themselves, creating a lasting impression in the mind and heart of a child….” So begins this warm, evocative recall of childhood summers spent at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, before superhighways and jet planes change the meaning of vacations and seasons in the sun. Summer Magic opens – as every summer for the Jewett family did – with the adventurous trip by train and ferry an overnight boat from New Jersey to Boston to the big, airy house at Annisquam. Then followed the familiar but ever cherished activities with which children and parents filled out there leisurely days. Whether setting off in a rowboat to go clamming when “the faint gleams of phosphorescence showed in the darkling water far beneath the oars”; or picnicking on an uninhabited island; or calling on Cousin Any and Cousin Helen, too gentle, remarkably generous ladies; or visiting Grandfather’s office at the wharf in Glouchester; or going to church (“in the winter time we were Episcopalians, and in the summer we were Universalists”); or packing up on the last day in September – each is a luminous memory. And in recapturing in Summer Magic enchantment of a time and place, of close family life and the joys of carefree holiday, Mary Wallace revise for all of us the magic of youth in summer and yesterday. — from book’s dustjacket