I read about this book somewhere, but when I heard about it, I thought it would be only an ok book written by the person who, with her husband, spent 15 years building a replica of an amazing house. I was sure passion would be there, but I didn’t expect that the author would be a talented writer who could recreate a long-ago world with such interest and clarity. Jane Goodrich has done it.
The story behind the story is that Ms. Goodrich saw a photo of this house in a book when she was 12 years old. She came across it again when she was in college, and she and her then-fiance, who became her husband, set out to find it. When they got to Manchester-by-the-Sea, they found out that the house had been demolished in 1929, but the plans were still at the Boston Public Library. That led to a professor of architectural history at Northeastern, who had the blueprints, and gave them to the young couple. So began a 15 year journey.
As they searched, built, and bought everything to make an exact replica of this home on Swan’s Island in ME, Ms. Goodrich became more and more drawn into the enigma of George Nixon Black, the man who commissioned the house. As if building a 19th century elaborate mansion wasn’t enough, Ms. Goodrich began to research the life and times of Mr. Black. “The House at Lobster Cove” is like a New England version of “Downton Abbey”, complete with Brahmins and ordinary people, the powerful and those who served them, families, struggles, wars, trade, architecture, and politics. This is an imagined life of Nixon Black, including his struggle with being gay at a time when that would have been scandalous.
I loved the book, and its world, and apologize to the author for assuming it wouldn’t be well-written and captivating. Kragsdale, originally architected by Robert Stearn, is more than a house. It’s a world, both in the past, and remarkably, in the unlikely present. If you’re like me, you’ll enjoy being lost there while you read and the characters and times come to life. And then you’ll remember that this author and her husband have built this very same house. Amazing!
And finally, I have been tucking into some books; and not that I read only books with real estate as the theme, but this one was totally charming: “The Long Haul, a Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road” by Finn Murphy.