Escaping with a Good Summer Read
By Marina Reis

White House by the Sea by Kate Storey

Something enchanting happened to me recently, as the seasons cycled back to summer. I found myself hit with a wistfulness for last summer, perhaps because a lot in my life has changed since 2024. I found myself immersed in memories of last June; smelling the ripening lilacs on a neighbour’s tree, the ambient sounds of a suburb I no longer live in; wind chimes, a sprinkler, the white noise of the AC unit, a lawn mower in the near distance.

I remember points in time in my life through the art I came across at these certain defining moments. A trick as old as time, it provides meaning to what I am experiencing. Whether that is a movie that unexpectedly left an impression on my troubled psyche, a limited series I binge-watched to cure heartbreak, or a song that became the soundtrack to my mood swings. But it is usually a book. It always comes back to a book.

It was sometime last summer when I took a rudimentary shopping trip to Walmart. The parking lot’s concrete was sweltering, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the sole of my sandals melted onto the tar lines. The sun was merciless, as it should be that time of the year.

I always shop with and follow a list. I know myself enough to know that if I don’t do this, I will end up with a box of limited-edition cookies or something else I don’t need. List or no, I will always browse the book aisle of any store that has one. White House by the Sea by Kate Storey was not on my list, so it didn’t come home with me that day. It stayed in my head and heart, however, which was broken when I returned to Walmart just a week later to see that all copies of the paperback had been sold. No problem. I ordered it online, and it arrived less than a week later.

White House by the Sea chronicles the summers that the Kennedy family spent vacationing at their summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. A destination where generations of this family would come to “celebrate, bond, play, and grieve.” And here was the start of my summer in 2024: reading about the summer traditions of people I had never known and who I had nothing in common with, but who brought out in me an empathy I had long since stopped believing in. In this fashion, I floated away from the glass-topped patio table where my cup of store-bought iced tea sat sweating, and towards last century, towards the seacoast of a place I had never been. Something about this season makes this type of escape easier and cleaner. There is no guilt in becoming unmoored. Let the clock wait.

I may have visited the Kennedys for one day or one week, I cannot recall. Time does not work the same way in liminal spaces as it does out here, what with its gridlock traffic and vacations that always come to an end. Reading this book, I became acquainted with a crass father, who delighted in teaching his sons to become womanizers (famously), but I somehow found myself dwelling in his humiliation and disrespect when an exclusive country club didn’t even deign his application with a reply. The silence was heard loud and clear: no Irish Catholics. I still hold unforgiveness in my heart for what they did to a troubled daughter: lobotomized and sent away to be forgotten. Daughters are rarely worth the investment. They can’t become president after all. All the same, Rosemary Kennedy was one of the few who lived to see old age. Or the lashing out of a drug-addicted teenage son who, only those among us who know the cure for the grief of losing a father suddenly can pass judgement on.

White House by the Sea spanned so many lifetimes, and delved into so many broken hearts, disappointments and failures, and it reminded me to be more patient with what life brings you—or doesn’t bring you, in many instances. It reminded me that grief takes no prisoners. It reminded me that human nature is imperfect and the same everywhere you go. It reminded me that, like Rome, legacies aren’t built in a day, and the work to do so is rarely glamourous; only the retelling by a talented hand make it so. I will never see the ocean at Cape Cod, but a simple paperback made me grateful for getting to see another prairie summer because, as a Kennedy can probably tell you better than anyone, tomorrow is promised to no one.

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Did you enjoy this post? Read more by Marina Reis, here.

About this Contributor:

Marina Reis is a Senior Project Manager who joined Word Alive Press in 2017. She graduated from the University of Winnipeg in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.