For years, as I worked through the slow, circuitous process of writing this book, people often asked: “What’s it about?” A fair question, one I never quite managed to answer succinctly. I lacked a tidy logline, especially during the early going, when the book was more a tangle of ideas than a cohesive whole. But I always knew that Barton’s article lived at its heart. I’d already decided my novel would feature heavy weather — storms have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. Birds and wind currents also fluttered persistently through my thoughts. The Sabine gull, for instance, inspired the name of my protagonist.

And then, in reading about hurricanes, I came across a new favorite word: entrain. Scientifically, entrainment refers to the process by which something — like a hurricane’s eye — draws in and carries along whatever might get caught in its orbit. Migratory birds, for example, can be entrained into storms. And of course there’s a second, more literal meaning: to board a train. That image — queues on a platform, the anticipation of departure—seized my imagination. The passengers I envisioned were soldiers.

Thus, the novel began to take form: birds, storms, radar, soldiers, and eventually airplanes. My leading man necessarily became a pilot, an Army Air Corps veteran swept up by forces beyond his control. Themes of connection and separation began to surface. I realized there was no better setting to explore these than an island. Martha’s Vineyard, with its windswept beauty and layered history, provided the perfect canvas. And then Chappaquiddick, too — a story within a story, a place within a place. Chappy connects to its larger neighbor by a tenuous sandspit, sometimes breached by the same storms that fascinated me. The geography worked with me from the start.

Meanwhile, I embellished Edgartown’s 1950’s reality with a touch more opulence and glamour than would be strictly accurate. (For those keeping track, you’ll find a better explanation in my acknowledgments.) I also leaned into the very real quaintness of midcentury life: letters and telegrams, summer homes without television sets, being apart and alone when such a thing was still possible . . .

Now that it’s out there in world, I’m asking myself as much as anybody: “What is this book about?” As best as I can tell, it’s about love — unexpected, clumsy, staggering love — complicated by life’s inevitable stalls and upheavals. It’s about a summer romance, about growing up, venturing down strange paths, falling, failing, daring to move forward. It’s about community and class, nature and nurture. It’s about a few of my favorite things: storms, weddings, handwritten letters in mail, and the irresistible prettiness of a black-and-white era. Maybe too, like the radar technology Sumner Barton was so excited to announce, it’s about searching for signals among the clouds — hoping to glimpse, for good or ill, whatever might be on its way.