To the New Owners A Martha's Vineyard Memoir

“[This] evocative memoir [from] a deft and witty Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist . . . pointedly showcases the simpler, more modest and, alas, rapidly disappearing old Vineyard she loves. Unfortunately, the changes she mourns are happening everywhere. Which makes records like this all the more valuable.” —The Washington Post
 
“For anyone who has ever been curious about life on the Vineyard, or fantasized about settling in, Blais offers a diverting portrait.” —The Boston Globe
 
“A bittersweet ode to a Martha’s Vineyard home . . . The chapter on formidable Vineyard doyenne and Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham is . . . positively luminous with nostalgic affection. And the broader canvas of Vineyard life—the shops, the storms, the wry local humor—is painted with exactly the kind of skill and evocation readers would expect from the author of the bestselling In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle.” —The Christian Science Monitor
 
“Full of beguiling stories and memories.” —The National Book Review
 
“A highly readable valentine to a much loved [home] . . . We find fascinating portraits of such eminences as the late Katherine Graham and the couples’ good friend, the writer Phil Caputo.” —John Greenya, The Washington Times
 
“Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Blais affectionately recounts the summers she spent since the 1970s on Martha’s Vineyard . . . Blais beautifully documents summers shared with family and friends enjoying unhurried days spent reading, visiting the quirky island towns, and basking in the natural environment . . . A bittersweet account of a wonderfully unplugged summer life.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle pays tribute with affection and humor to [a] shabby but supremely well-located Martha’s Vineyard house . . . Keeping nostalgia in witty check, while occasionally allowing it to shape a lyrical portrait of the place, she takes the reader on a verbal tour of the island . . . Blais fills her book with sentences to savor and memories so clear they seem to become the reader’s own.” —Booklist
 
“[Blais’s] voice is intimate, loving, but the opposite of sentimental. She knows how to tell a story by letting the story tell itself . . . All of us living through Trumpworld are searching for a Martha’s Vineyard of the mind where we can get our bearings. Maddy has given us that place.” —Joseph Ellis
 
“Blais writes with eye, mind, and heart in equal measure. I laughed aloud, teared up at least once a chapter, and sighed with recognition throughout. Coming to the end was as bittersweet as Labor Day.” —George Howe Colt, author of The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home
 
“Madeleine Blais knows the secret of a superb memoir: a wry sense of humor and an honest sense of gratitude leaven the inevitable pain of To the New Owners. Anyone who has lived in a house and had to leave it will laugh and be moved by this brilliantly written book.” —Anita Shreve, author of The Stars are Fire