Summer on the Bluffs

Set in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, the historic summer enclave of the Black American elite, Hostin’s first novel gathers three goddaughters at the home of Amelia Vaux Tanner, who has announced she will leave the house to one of them. The season that follows forces the secrets underpinning that family into the open. Hostin uses the setting, and its long history of Black wealth and leisure, as more than backdrop: the place makes its own claims on everyone in it.