Martha Hall Kelly | Writers' Voices

New York Times bestselling author, Martha Hall Kelly, joins Writer’s Voices to discuss her latest novel, a historical fiction set in Martha’s Vineyard, titled The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club. Based on her own family’s history, the story is told in dual timelines, with one set in 2016 and the other during WWII in 1942. The book begins in 2016 where we meet Mari Starwood, a woman in her mid-30’s, whose mother has just passed away and she travels to Martha’s Vineyard in search of a famous painter named Elizabeth Devereaux. After meeting, Elizabeth tells Mari the story of the Smith sisters, Cadence and Briar, whose family once owned the farm she currently lives in. Back then, the year was 1942 and Martha’s Vineyard was being used as a training ground for the U.S. Army, and amidst all of the military activity and trying to keep their farm afloat, the girls decide to come together with their friends to start a book club.

For Kelly, the inspiration to include a book club in this novel came from her mother’s friends and their reading circle. “I really feel like book clubs are more than just reading a book. It’s women bonding, it’s what they do while they’re talking about the books, and in this book, they as a group… talk about no richies allowed, they want a book club that’s just their friends and normal people, but it turns into that little group of people while they’re reading the books and doing things… in my book, they make the first of those little books to give to the soldiers… they also as a group get caught up in this mystery of what is happening with this mysterious person that washed up on shore, so a lot of their time is taken up with that, but they also bond together through this group of women and that’s what sees them through. Books really saw people through in the war… it was a way for them to take their minds off of it and be together and have a positive thing to talk about.”