When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the
seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is
a nineteen-year-old bride fresh from South Carolina's Low
Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in
the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like
beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an
outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she
will never fit in. And of course, she doesn't...at first.
But over the many summers she spends there, Maude comes to
cherish life in the colony, as she does the people who
share it with her. There is her husband Peter, consumed
with a darkness of spirit; her adored but dangerously
fragile children; her domineering mother-in-law, who
teaches her that it is the women who posses the strength
to keep the colony intact; and Maine native Micah Willis,
who is ultimately Maude's truest friend.
This brilliant novel, rich with emotion, is filled with
appealing, intense, and indomitable characters. Anne
Rivers Siddons paints a portrait of a woman determined to
preserve the spirit of past generations--and the future of
aplaice where she became who she is...a place called
Colony.