Tim Ehrenberg, you’re a genius at creating brilliant ways to sell books at our island’s own Mitchell’s Book Corner. Plus, you’re so handsome. Thank you, Mitchell’s staff, for leaving the back door open so I could slip in and sign some books! As a reader and a writer, I’m grateful for Mitchell’s Book Corner and Nantucket Bookworks. It’s remarkable that this small, faraway island is home to so many fabulous writers: Nathaniel Philbrick, Elin Hilderbrand, Blue Balliet, and Leslie Linsley, to name a few, and also home to the Nantucket Book Festival every June. Titcomb’s Bookshop on the Cape, I can’t wait to walk into your shop again. I send so much gratitude to independent bookstores everywhere!
This year I really missed seeing—literally—my agent, Meg Ruley. Meg grew up on the island, and often comes here, but we didn’t get to have lunch at the Downy Flake this year. Next year, two lunches! Thanks to all at the Jane Rotrosen Literary Agency.
A big hug to my virtual assistant, Sara Mallion, who has been amazingly helpful, clever, and creative with social media. I look forward to laughing with her in this new year. Chris Mason and Novation Media, thank you for your reliable assistance.
We all complain about screens, but I’m glad we have the technology that made it possible for me to see friends and family with FaceTime and Zoom. The first thing I do in the morning—after I make coffee—is to open Facebook and check in with my friends. They keep me in touch with the wide world. It’s such fun to see their pets and their babies and grandbabies and to “talk” to them. Thank you all for your conversation and your encouragement!
During this closed-in year, I’ve been delighted to speak with many wonderful bookshops and libraries and readers through Zoom. I’m sad and probably a little bit insane because I haven’t been able to set foot in my beloved library, the Nantucket Atheneum, but I learned about Libby, the online library, and it’s been a great help.
I continually find inspiration for books in my own family. This year my daughter, Sam, and her partner, Tommy, added one more to their family. Welcome, little Arwyn, or as my sister insists on calling her, Junebug. (Is there a Junebug? My sister is a nurse, and strong-willed, so there is a Junebug now!) My sister, Martha, my daughter, Sam, and my granddaughter Junebug are all Geminis and powerhouses, but I think Ellias, Fabulous, Emmett, and Annie are powerhouses, too. Maybe even power castles! I’m grateful to my son, Josh, and his husband, David, for their clever phone calls, videos, and views of gorgeous hiking trails and the Botanical Gardens in Arizona. I’ll see them someday.
Charley, I love you more every year and even more during this Covid year. I often felt like we were bears from a children’s story, curled up together in our nest with our books, magazines, and fat little Callie the cat. And some chocolate.
In 2020, I was even more of a hermit than usual, and, to be honest, I liked it. I wrote, and read, and occasionally Zoomed or FaceTimed with friends. Hearing someone’s voice on the telephone was brilliant! I was like a teenager lolling on the bed, having profound conversations. Thank you to Jill Hunter Burrill, Merry Anderson, Tricia Patterson, Deborah and Mark Beale, Sofiya Popova, Antonia Massie, Dinah Fulton, Mary and John West, Melissa and Nat Philbrick, Janet Schulte, and my OYP (official young person), Sara Manela. Curlette Anglin and Tanieca Hosang, you’re our superheroes!
Robb Forman Dew and I met in Williamstown, Massachusetts, around 1978, when our children were the same age and we were both writing our first novels. Mine was Stepping; Robb’s was Dale Loves Sophie to Death, which won the National Book Award. We criticized each other’s work, usually while drinking strawberry daiquiris, talked endlessly every day, and shared our deepest secrets. Robb adored her husband, Charles. I met and married Charley. When I moved to Nantucket with Charley, we stayed in touch and talked on the phone and planned to meet in the middle of Massachusetts in a beautiful B&B and talk about books and life. Robb died this year, not from Covid, and I can’t believe she’s gone. I keep her last message in her beautiful Southern voice on our answering machine.
Books—reading and writing them—have kept me sane this year. Okay, that’s true every year. It’s a joy doubled to be working with an editor like Shauna Summers. It’s as if we’re together in a raft, and when I eagerly paddle toward the rapids, she carefully steers me away. And she doesn’t hit me in the head with her paddle. Thank you, Shauna.
Books have kept a zillion people contented during this unprecedented and difficult year. I’m grateful to Gina Centrello, Kara Welsh, and Kim Hovey for keeping the great pleasure yacht of Penguin Random House going full speed ahead. Lexi Batsides, Allison Schuster, Karen Fink, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Madeline Hopkins, thank you for all your help.
I’m writing this on the first day of January 2021. Ahhh. Here at last. I wish you all a safe, healthy, and book-filled year.
by nancy thayer
Family Reunion
Girls of Summer
Let It Snow
Surfside Sisters
A Nantucket Wedding
Secrets in Summer
The Island House
A Very Nantucket Christmas
The Guest Cottage
An Island Christmas
Nantucket Sisters
A Nantucket Christmas
Island Girls
Summer Breeze
Heat Wave
Beachcombers
Summer House
Moon Shell Beach
The Hot Flash Club Chills Out
Hot Flash Holidays
The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again
The Hot Flash Club
Custody
Between Husbands and Friends
An Act of Love
Belonging
Family Secrets
Everlasting
My Dearest Friend
Spirit Lost
Morning
Nell
Bodies and Souls
Three Women at the Water’s Edge
Stepping
About the Author
Nancy Thayer is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including Girls of Summer, Let
