In a perfect world, I would have traveled through every place I have written about in this book. But I live on a barrier beach, and I rarely drive over the bridge to leave it. I am a most imperfect traveler. This is a work of fiction, and there are points in the book where I have bent geographic and historical detail to fit my story. I wrote this novel out of my passion for the landscape of the town where I live. I have tried to be true to that landscape—its beauty and its quirks, the rhythms of its seasons and its tides. However, I did not even begin to try to capture the lives and characters of its inhabitants. I did recount the actual adventures of a few Westporters, no longer alive, to give the novel context. Apart from that, with the exception of several historical figures, the people in this book are not based on any real persons, living or dead. The stories in this book are not based on any actual events, with the exception of the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, which ravaged this section of the coast.