The Nature of Things

This is the second "island" book I've read this summer, the first one being Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand . Both of them are winners. The island, in this case, is Block Island off of Rhode Island and the characters are lonely and unconnected strangers who come together there one summer and change each other's lives. Some of them are permanent residents and some are summer visitors but they are all looking for something while hiding secrets from the world. Joy Sousa is a single mother of an adolescent daughter who has painstakingly built a business which supports her and her daughter with very little financial assistance from the absent father, who has remarried and has another daughter. Joy's business is a bakery that specializes in whoopie pies, but this summer her empire is being threatened by a food truck that has come to the island and has proved very popular with the islanders much to Joy's chagrin. Anthony Puckett is a New York writer who had pr...