The Guest Book, by Sarah Blake

The Guest Book, by Sarah Blake (2019)

The Miltons were an old WASP family to whom the word “summer” was a verb.  One summer afternoon in 1936, while sailing in Penobscot Bay, Ogden Milton and his wife Kitty decided on a whim to buy Crockett’s Island.  This Island became the family’s rock and anchor for the next several decades.  The novel follows three generations of Ogden women, and the story goes back and forth between Kitty the matriarch, her daughter Joan, and granddaughter Evie.

A year earlier, the Milton’s had lost their 5-year old son when he fell from a window.  Thus, when Elsa, a German Jew who was an acquaintance of Ogden’s, asked Kitty if she would take care of her young son to protect him from the War, Kitty declined.

The Milton’s were known for hosting elaborate parties on their summer island, but the guest were all old money.  The next generation began mixing with people who were NOKD (not our kind, dear).

Ogden was head of a family investment firm and all his employees were of moneyed families.  When he hired Len Levy, a Jew, everyone was wary of him and the stereotypes of Jews and money was not far from their minds.  Len was assigned a somewhat menial task of reviewing documents.  In the process, he uncovered the firm’s investment with Nazis.

The surviving Milton son, Moss, was expected to join the firm and take over from his father.  Moss, however, was artistic and wasn’t interested in his family’s firm.  He befriended Reg Pauling, an African-American writer.  On a whim, he off-handedly invited both Reg and Len to his family’s island.  When they decided to take him up on the offer, the Milton’s were caught off guard.

Kitty spent the rest of her life trying to atone for the decisions she made in her life.

I felt this book tried to take on too much by mixing race and religious stereotypes into this novel.

It was a fast read.

Read:  August 7, 2020

3 Stars