Margreete’s Harbor by Eleanor Morse

Margreete’s Harbor by Eleanor Morse is one of the best books you’ll read this summer.

We meet Margreete on the morning that she sets her kitchen on fire in 1955. As much as she wishes it were not so, Margreete must acknowledge that there are going to be consequences. Margreete calls her daughter, Liddie, with the news and it does not take long for Liddie and her husband, Harry, to realize that the best solution for Margreete, and for themselves, is for their family of four to move across the country to Maine to live with Margreete.

What follows is the story of the next decade in the lives of these characters, and their family and friends. You will come to love them all. Margreete as she becomes more and more forgetful and yet so very aware. Liddie who has left her adult friends to move back to her childhood home – and the career she’d been returning to as her children were reaching a more independent age. For Harry, it is a sacrifice to leave a teaching job he loved – his new position in Maine disappointing and depressing. 

This move is a challenge for everyone – but they are all good people, doing what they think is best. There is no doubt this was the best possible way for Margreete to live the remaining years of her life – and really it is good for all as they find their own paths into a future so different than their expectations.

Margreete’s Harbor is a beautifully composed story of a marriage, and the raising of children who will one day find their own way through the turbulent 60s and beyond.  Through the Vietnam War, the protests, the news casts, the death count each day. This is a story of the challenge to stay true as husband and wife age and change, one not always in tandem with the other. It is also about the acceptance that so very many things are beyond our control but what we can control is how we respond – and that responding with kindness and compassion makes life better for all.