I don’t think I’ve ever read an Anne Rivers Siddon book that I did not enjoy. Her stories are always set somewhere on the East Coast, mostly in the Outer Banks of North and South Carolina, places where I’d love to live. Off Season, set in Maine, did not disappoint.

Amazon describes the book as:

For as long as she can remember, they were Cam and Lilly–happily married, totally in love with each other, parents of a beautiful family, and partners in life. Then, after decades of marriage, it ended as every great love story does…in loss. After Cam’s death, Lilly takes a lone road trip to her and Cam’s favorite spot on the remote coast of Maine, the place where they fell in love over and over again, where their ghosts still dance. There, she looks hard to her past–to a first love that ended in tragedy; to falling in love with Cam; to a marriage filled with exuberance, sheer life, and safety– to try to figure out her future.

It is a journey begun with tender memories and culminating in a revelation that will make Lilly re-evaluate everything she thought was true about her husband and her marriage.

But it is so much more than that. The story begins in Lilly’s childhood and the time she spent at the family vacation home in a small town on a cove in Maine. Her bucolic childhood ends disasterously in an event that changes her life.

I was so very touched by a paragraph in the story after Lilly’s husband dies suddenly. Lilly is telling her daughter about being told of her husband’s death. She describes how she received a phone call from a trusted family friend and how grateful she was that this man had called her.

“Why?” Betsy shrieked…Dead is Dead! Why the hell should you care who called you?”

Lilly answered, “Because when you lose somebody you love, it helps a great deal to be told by someone who loved them too.” (p. 278)

When my brother died, no one other than him had my telephone number. The only way they could think of to get a hold of me was by sending me a Facebook message, as I was friends with some of his friends on Facebook. This friend, who had also been an employee of my brother for over a decade, sent me a message that just said that my brother-in-law’s sister wanted me to call her. I thought this was very odd, so I messaged him back and asked if everything was “ok”. He answered, “no, call me” and gave me his phone number. I called him and he then said the words that no one wants to say or hear, “Bruce is dead.” I, too, have always been grateful that it was he, rather than a woman whom I only knew peripherally, who gave me the most devastating news in my life.