(This post was last updated on October 24, 2024)
The novel Burnt Cove will be my 22nd published book when it is released.
First draft finished on August 25, 2024. Hard-copy editing completed on September 8, 2024. Additional editing in progress as of October 6, 2024. Book completed on October 24, 2024.
For a chance to win an autographed copy and more, email pascoagwriter@gmail.com and write "Burnt Cove" in the subject field.
This is the opening:
Copyright 2024 gwaynemiller.com
Chapter 1
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.” – Irish headstone
A passerby traveling the road that descends into the village of Stonington on Deer Isle, Maine, at eleven o’clock on that cloudless morning of Thursday, June 15, would have observed a peaceful and pretty scene.
Framed by a white chapel to the left and the harbor with the emerald stepping-stone islands of Merchant Row to the right, a cemetery with its carefully trimmed grass and weathered tombstones presented itself as picturesque in that quintessential coastal way. The oaks and maples shimmered with their new leaves in a spring that last week had turned unseasonably warm, a delightful development after a winter that had continued stubbornly past Easter, when four inches of snow fell, ruining the egg hunt and sunrise services. Only the mound of back-hoed earth beneath a green tarp brought unpleasantness to the scene.
A new grave had been dug.
And there, next to it in her coffin, was a woman about to assume residence.
Measured numerically, the living who had joined the deceased in her final moments above ground constituted an unimpressive assembly.
These were them: Fr. Bertrand Lombardi, the octogenarian pastor of Saint Andrew Church, home of the island’s only Roman Catholic parish; three part-time employees, the full staff, of Farrington Family Funeral Home; and 16 mourners, all but one middle-aged or older. The oldest was a wheelchair-bound man who was in the care of an aide and wrapped in an Afghan, despite the humidity and heat, 76 degrees and climbing.
And thus a passerby might have assumed that the dearly departed had been a person of no particular import: a local who had passed a quiet existence, troubling no one and perhaps having made a meritorious contribution to the gene pool; and/or a native-born returned after decades from a more tax-friendly place such as Florida. The sort of ordinary person who had been the subject of ordinary obituaries with an outdated head shot in the regional weeklies, The Ellsworth American and Island Ad-Vantages -- obituaries laced with “dearly” and “beloved” and “loving” and other such flowery adjectives composed by a funeral-home director with tearful input from a family member with no desire for candor, let alone full disclosure, at this Most Difficult Time.
And that assumption would have been correct.
The deceased’s obituary, illustrated with a black-and-white photo some three decades old, had appeared in this week’s editions of The Ellsworth American and Island Ad-Vantages. Beyond the canned tributes, it offered little more than an age; a birthplace; the day, time and place of the service; names of surviving relatives; and a request that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in her name to Haven Home Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Deer Isle, ME, 04627.
In her 97 years, more than she had expected or desired, the existence of Rose O’Reilly White had been confirmed in published form only four times before.
The first marked her wedding to her husband Bill, the man in the wheelchair, on August 23, 1947, in a Charlestown, Massachusetts, church: a two-paragraph story that ran in the Boston Daily Advertiser together with a dozen similar accounts of the latest post-war couples who had committed to their role in bringing forth the initially promising but ultimately disappointing Baby Boom (given how the country and the planet had worsened on its watch), which was beginning to depart the scene amidst a fetid mix of political buffoonery, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, racism, MAGA mayhem, and incessant whining about depleted 401(k) accounts and the cost of Medicare Plan B. Granted, there were many Boomers who gave back and whined not, and many others who struggled for their food, housing and healthcare in civilization’s richest nation ever. But their stories were largely lost in the stew of horrors.
The second published confirmation of Rose’s existence was a story in the Bangor Daily News in July 1965 commemorating the tenth anniversary of Paradise Park, a small theme park noted for its mini-golf, batting cage, petting zoo, Tilt-A-Whirl and 50-cent lobster rolls that Rose and husband Bill had built and owned: Ten Fun Years at Deer Isle’s ‘Family Destination,’ the BDN headline read. At the time the story was published, Rose was five months pregnant with Jack, her only son, the middle-aged man who stood graveside today.
Her third previous published appearance concerned a tragedy: the obituary of her and Bill’s daughter, who occupied the grave next to that into which she was about to be lowered. BRENDA O’REILLY WHITE, February 1, 1950 - July 29, 1973, With the Angels Now, the stone read.
And her fourth had been in the autumn of 1982, when Paradise Park had burned to the ground, never to reopen. The fire had drawn media attention including a report on Portland’s MCSH TV’s six o’clock news broadcast and accounts in local newspapers, large and small, around the state. “Paradise Lost,” was the headline in the Kennebec Journal.
But how little media accounts and obits reveal about the lives the dead actually lived.
How many secrets are taken to the grave or the crematory.
Rose took many of hers with her, but unlike most other people passing on, she’d left a way to unlock them.
Which is why, during Jack’s last visit, she’d handed him the key to a safe deposit box at Bar Harbor Bank & Trust with his promise not to open it until the time was right.
“When will that be?” Jack had said.
“You will know,” Rose had said.
Now I do, Jack thought as he stood there that morning of Thursday, June 15, 2023.
