If you have ever imagined a trip to Martha’s Vineyard in your mind, Anne Rivers Siddons book Up Island captures that shining landscape in minute detail. Up Island is the story of Molly Redwine, a charming Southern woman, wife of a successful businessman and mother to two children. The story begins with a seemingly innocent rash on her posterior that serves as the first sign she’s in for trouble. While on business trips, Molly’s husband has been having an affair with a coworker. When he finally confesses to Molly, she is lost and doesn’t know where to turn. When she tries to find comfort with her less than sympathetic mother, Molly is shocked with her mother’s death.

Cover of UP ISLAND

After her unfaithful husband decides he should live in the house they have occupied for twenty years, Molly retreats to Martha’s Vineyard with a friend for the summer. It is here that she uses taking care of two old ladies, a one-legged man and a pair of swans to find purpose for herself once again.

On the surface, this book is simply a story of a woman heading into a divorce which triggers a mid-life crisis situation. But with the setting of the Vineyard and the eloquent descriptions of the landscape, this story turns into a very clear picture in your mind. Many of the descriptions are beautifully written:

“The three weeks before Christmas were exquisite. Whenever I think “winter,” it is not the Southern winters I have always known—landscapes of sepia and gray and fields the color of an old lion’s coast, and soft, sulky, wet days—but those short weeks before the turning of the light toward spring up island. Days were cold and dry and clear, and the sun hung low in the south, so that the light, instead of pouring down from overhead, seemed to flow over the fields and the sea like thin silver wine from an overturned cask.”

The use of description works well in many parts of the book, Where the plot lacks is during six or more pages of description that lead to no conclusion. When description is used for a purpose, it drives to story right into the next chapter.

While slow in some parts, Molly’s adventures up island should intrigue many readers. It is not necessarily Molly’s story that is the most interesting in the book, but rather her interaction with the Ponders: Bella, Luz and Dennis. They are part of an old up island family that has many secrets to keep. While Molly tends to their particular needs, she slowly begins to discover their secrets and why this family is so torn apart, yet still very much connected to each other.