“Wash ashore on this island and find a community of characters whose lives are as interwoven, interdependent, and thus as complicated as its long history. Babies are born, beloved friends take their leave, and lovers change partners, as each arrival and departure of the ferry brings new twists. Cronin has built a world that you won’t want to sail away from!”
—Juliette Fay, best-selling author of five novels including The Tumbling Turner Sisters
“Olympic racing sailor Carol Newman Cronin takes us on a voyage of discovery built around the human interaction with an island at the entrance of Narragansett Bay off the coast of Rhode Island. Every sentence draws the reader into the curious lives of each character with a descriptive style that puts you in the middle of the narrative. Carol has a gift for story-telling that makes you just keep turning every page to learn what is going to happen next. A word of caution— once you start reading you won’t stop until the book ends.”
—Gary Jobson, President of the National Sailing Hall of Fame
“Lifetime sailor Carol Newman Cronin combines well-drawn characters, their family legacies, and the history of the island itself in a vivid story about the struggle of preservation versus development, grace against greed. Anyone who visits a New England island should have a copy of this in hand for summer reading. Wherever you look— the ferry landing, the coffee shop, the general store—you’ll recognize the characters.”
—Doug Logan, author of BoatSense
“Ferry to Cooperation Island is an entertaining portrait of island life where a quirky population of year-round inhabitants and their green ferry captain must navigate much more than a passage to the mainland. Readers will root for love between arch-rivals while a distinctive cast of salty, New-Englanders cling to their beloved island’s natural beauty. This novel takes on an age-old balancing act, pitting traditionalists against developers espousing ‘economic progress.’ Written with fast-paced, vernacular wit, Ferry to Cooperation Island is the perfect antidote for a land-locked point-of-view.”
—Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg, author of Eden and The Nine
“With Ferry to Cooperation Island, Carol Newman Cronin creates an entirely believable and entirely engaging community off the coast of Rhode Island, peopled with characters who are at once authentic and intriguing. She draws the reader into a world of small town wrangling for land, wealth, status, friendship, and love, and those conflicts are made all the more captivating by the authentic and recognizable folks who populate the story. Ferry to Cooperation Island is a terrific read, at once funny, poignant, intriguing and captivating. As with her earlier works, Cronin’s understanding of and love for the people, the land, the sea, and the communities of her part of the world shines through.”
—James L. Nelson, author of the Isaac Biddlecomb Series and The Only Life that Mattered
“Cronin, an accomplished sailor as well as successful novelist, has deftly woven another absorbing story that combines the perfect amount of intrigue, adventure and romance into a can’t-put-down novel. At any time of year, Ferry to Cooperation Island is a perfect and highly recommended escape.”
—Roberta Gately, author of Footprints in the Dust, Lipstick in Afghanistan, and The Bracelet
“You can practically smell the salt air, feel the weight of the fog, taste the bitterness of pride and longing. Carol Newman Cronin brings Brenton Island to life in the way that only a fellow boater can, loving the flaws and peculiarities that make every character well worth knowing in a waterfront town.”
—Kim Kavin, award-winning writer and editor for Yachting Magazine
“A fast-tacking mystery with Carol Newman Cronin’s deep knowledge of the tides, tensions, and talent in Rhode Island’s beautiful and complex bays.”