(Blais, Madeleine) Madeleine Blais was a reporter for the Miami Herald for years before joining the faculty of the School of Journalism at the University of Massachusetts. She is the author of In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle, Uphill Walkers, and The Heart Is an Instrument, a collection of her journalism. To the New Owners: A Martha’s Vineyard Memoir (Atlantic Monthly Press) is Madeleine Blais‘s recollection of summers spent at her in-laws bucolic cottage. A little more than two miles down a poorly marked one-lane dirt road, the house was better termed a shack―it had no electricity or modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. To the New Owners is Madeleine Blais’s charming, evocative memoir of this house, and of the Vineyard itself. Many of us have one place that anchors our most powerful memories. For Blais, it was the Vineyard house―a retreat and a dependable pleasure that also measured changes in her family.
