Nantucket Food Pantry: The winter months on Nantucket can be tough, and we do have a vulnerable population once the summer visitors stop coming. The Food Pantry has long been addressing the needs of our islanders with food insecurity. Website: Assistnantucket.org.
On behalf of Nantucket, I thank you for reading this section!
That brings us to the end of this guide. Did I miss things? Yes. A more comprehensive guide may be in my future, but this will certainly get you started.
I want to say a few parting words about the island. I came to Nantucket in 1993 intending to stay just for the summer and “write my book.” （This was a novel called Girl Stuff, which never saw the light of day.） I was living in New York City at the time, and when I returned to my apartment in Manhattan, I burst into tears. My roommate looked at me and said, “I take it you had a good summer?” I knew then that my future would be in Nantucket; I moved there the following June. I had fallen in love with the island—the dunes and the eelgrass and the sandy roads that cut through the moors; the houses with names and boot scrapers on the front steps and lavish flower boxes; the simple aesthetic of gray shingles with white trim; the days of fog and the days of bright sunshine; the singular pleasure of driving a Jeep onto the beach and watching the sun set over the water at Fortieth Pole; the smell of butter and garlic as I walked into 21 Federal; the taste of corn picked from the fields of Bartlett’s Farm only an hour before; the sensation every night of going to bed with sand in the sheets. But more than all of that, I fell in love with the people. It’s the people of Nantucket who have made the island my home and who have made raising three children here such a wonderful experience. The year-round community is diverse and vibrant. We are hardy folks, patient and tolerant, and there is no community that comes together to help one another like we do.
I owe Nantucket Island everything I have and everything I am. What a muse she has been!
XO, Elin
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Acknowledgments
I had a lot of help in creating the Hotel Nantucket. My inspiration was the Nantucket Hotel and Resort, owned by Mark and Gwenn Snider. Mark and Gwenn lead by excellent example, and they have assembled an incredible team, many of whom have worked at the hotel since it opened in June of 2012. I would like to thank general manager Jamie Holmes for sitting down and talking with me. I also had an extremely informative conversation with LeighAnne McDonald of the hotel’s front desk. In no particular order, thank you to Nicole Miller, Tim Benoit, Deb Ducas, Johnathan Rodriguez, Carlos and Fulya Castrello, John Vecchio, Sharon Quigley, Kate O’Connor, Matthew Miller and Rick James, Danilo Kozic, Patricia Dolloff, Frederick Clarke, Wayne Brown, and Amy Vanderwolk. As Shelly Carpenter says, “Hotels aren’t about rooms. They aren’t about amenities. They’re about people.” The people who work at the Nantucket Hotel and Resort are some of the very finest in the hospitality industry.
For design inspiration, I want to thank Elizabeth Georgantas, Erin Gates, and my brilliant sister-in-law Lisa Hilderbrand. I must give credit to Elizabeth Conlon for the penny-sheathed wall.
The books I found helpful were Jacob Tomsky’s Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles and So-Called Hospitality and Micah Solomon’s The Heart of Hospitality: Great Hotel and Restaurant Leaders Share Their Secrets. I stalked the websites of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration and the Statler Hotel, but the versions of the hotel school I present in this novel are fictional.
For all things Minnesota/Minnetonka-related, thank you to friends of （gulp） thirty-seven years, Fletcher and Carolyn Chambers.
Thank you to Amy Finsilver and Pamela Blessing of XV Beacon in Boston for being the ultimate lifesavers.
Thanks to Ashley Lasota for the term deep August. I love it.
Thank you to the Instagram account @Chadtucket. （You know why!）
As many of you know, I do not have an assistant, but I do have a “work husband.” His name is Tim Ehrenberg, and he’s the marketing director for Nantucket Book Partners and the creator of the Bookstagram account @timtalksbooks. He is also the secret to my success. Tim and I work tirelessly in the scary basement of Mitchell’s Book Corner, where I sign thousands of preorders that Tim then lovingly packages and ships out. He is the best companion, the strictest taskmaster, the savviest interviewer, the most generous reader, and one of my closest friends. I love you, Tim Ehrenberg! Never leave me!