Haven Point: A Novel

Virginia Hume

Jun 2021 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

About this audiobook

A sweeping debut novel about the generations of a family that spends summers in a seaside enclave on Maine's rocky coastline, for fans of Elin Hilderbrand, Beatriz Williams, and Sarah Blake.

1944: Maren Larsen is a blonde beauty from a small Minnesota farming town, determined to do her part to help the war effort––and to see the world beyond her family’s cornfields. As a cadet nurse at Walter Reed Medical Center, she’s swept off her feet by Dr. Oliver Demarest, a handsome Boston Brahmin whose family spends summers in an insular community on the rocky coast of Maine.

1970: As the nation grapples with the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, Oliver and Maren are grappling with their fiercely independent seventeen-year-old daughter, Annie, who has fallen for a young man they don’t approve of. Before the summer is over a terrible tragedy will strike the Demarests––and in the aftermath, Annie vows never to return to Haven Point.

2008: Annie’s daughter, Skye, has arrived in Maine to help scatter her mother’s ashes. Maren knows that her granddaughter inherited Annie’s view of Haven Point: despite the wild beauty and quaint customs, the regattas and clambakes and sing-alongs, she finds the place––and the people––snobbish and petty. But Maren also knows that Annie never told Skye the whole truth about what happened during that fateful summer.

Over seven decades of a changing America, through wars and storms, betrayals and reconciliations, Virginia Hume's Haven Point explores what it means to belong to a place, and to a family, which holds as tightly to its traditions as it does its secrets.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

Ratings and reviews

Multi-Generational Chick Lit — Audiobook Review — I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook that looks at the lives of a grandmother, mother, and grandchild. We see it through the eyes of the grandmother—starting from her time as a nurse at Walter Reed during World War II where she met her husband—and the granddaughter. We only get a sense of the mother from these two other women's perspectives. Not only does this book revolve around these three women—including a lot of secrets and tragedy—but also the island of Haven Point off the coast of Maine. The book follows the women from the 1940s until the early 2000s. The author did an excellent job making Haven Point real, including its social difficulties between old-school WASPs and “other." People forget how in the past WASPish people had a real prejudice against the Irish and New Money. Some plot-point circumstances seemed a bit too stereotypical, like the husband with a wandering eye and the flower child mother. But I thought the author did an excellent job showing the relationships between the women on the island as well as the pivotal one between grandmother and grandchild… and how the mother affected them both even if she had little “screen time.” The book had revelations for the granddaughter at the end that helped her make sense of her life and were a bit surprising; I thought it was well done. The narrator did a good job bringing the different characters to life. I found this to be an engrossing, well-done listen. If you like multi-generational “chick lit” as I do, you may enjoy this audiobook as much as I did. — I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.

About the author

Virginia Hume is a freelance writer and editor in Washington, D.C. Her early career was spent in public affairs and political communications. She lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with her husband, their daughters, and an under-groomed bichon named Chester.