Breaking Barriers

I’ve mentioned before that Summer Triangle isn’t only the title of my book but is also a natural phenomenon. The actual Summer Triangle, an asterism or a star pattern, struck me as a sparkling metaphor for “found family.” To me, each character represents a star. And ultimately, each woman will shine brightest for her connection to her tribe.

While the Summer Triangle might be my guiding light here (please indulge me my bad author puns!), it’s one of many aspects of the natural world that hold deeper meaning in the book. The Delmarva Peninsula offers a landscape rife with wonder, and any novel staking a claim to it will attempt to capture its beauty.

Yet a compelling setting can be so much more than a stage for the characters’ interactions. Maybe it mirrors their emotion. Maybe it contradicts the overall mood. Maybe its beauty overwhelms them, silencing their dialogue. Sometimes, the scenery even steals some of the spotlight, becoming a character in its own right.

In Summer Triangle, Assateague stands out as one of the novel’s key scene-stealing landscapes.

Image by Elizabeth Webster. Assateague Island, June 2020.

Assateague is a barrier island in Maryland, across the inlet from Ocean City. If you’ve heard of it, you probably know it best for its occupants. For over three hundred years, wild horses have survived on the island. Theories abound for how these (once domesticated, now feral) animals came to make Assateague their home. The most romantic one, popularized in the iconic book, Misty of Chincoteague, theorizes that the horses swam to safety following a Spanish shipwreck along the Virgnia coastline. The most probable one suggests that locals kept horses on the island for, perhaps predictably, tax evasion. However the horses arrived, Assateague belongs to them now.

In Summer Triangle however, Natalie and Damon believe that the island is all theirs.

But before I return to these characters, I’ll offer a few more words about Assateague Island. Like all barrier islands, Assateague’s form is malleable. Its structure constantly changes - altering its form with weather events, shifting oceanic sands, and climate-related rising sea levels.

Assateague’s recent history demonstrates that, overnight, the entire identity of a barrier island can be upended. While once attached to Fenwick Island’s mainland, the 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac hurricane created an inlet which irrevocably cleaved the landmasses. After the storm, Assateague was on its own.

As a girl, my family vacationed in Ocean City for years. There would always be one nice dinner to mark the week, and we often dined at Harrison’s Harbor Watch directly across the inlet from Assateague. I remember spending most of the meal distracted, scanning the island’s rocky breakwater for wild horses. I never did see one from that insulated vantage point.

But even then, Assateague - with its evolving form and its feral inhabitants - struck me as a near-mythic place, existing out of time.

Throughout Summer Triangle, Natalie and Damon’s relationship defies easy categorization. They’re fiercely loyal, but distant. They’ve held on to each other, even as they’ve willfully let go. Whatever connective tissue binds them is a hard thing to name. And most of the crescendo points of their love story take place on an untamed island that mirrors the ambiguity of their relationship.

The last time I went to Assateague was during the “Covid summer.” The world had slowly begun to open up, and my family had cloistered ourselves in a house near Silver Lake in Rehoboth Beach. In searching for a family-friendly activity, we spent one day headed South. Perhaps the magnetic pull of Assateague had never been so strong for us. What could be more ideal, from a social distancing standpoint, than to visit a remote island filled with horses? The setting was beautiful, but also practical - a way to get outside and to be left alone to our vacation pod. I remember looking at the horses, my chest swelling, and feeling buoyed with hope. I had never seen them as survivors the way I did that day.

I’ve had so many moments in my life, have read so many scenes from books, where I barely recall where an exchange took place. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We’re pack animals, after all, designed to seek out people first. It’s our way to look for our own kind. But still, I think there’s so much the natural world can teach us if we open our eyes to it.

At the end of Summer Triangle, Natalie and Damon leave Assateague behind - yet I believe they’ll hold the island’s lessons close forever. And so will I.

A Coastal Escape

What’s in a Name?