Is there a finer place to be in July than Martha’s Vineyard? That’s a loaded question for someone who has spent every summer of her life on a small island in Maine.

Jane Seagrave

When you’re at least the fifth generation of book collectors living in a house that’s been in the family for eight generations and you’ve run out of bookcase space, there is one obvious solution: You load your piles of culled-out books into sturdy grocery bags and donate them to the West Tisbury Library’s annual mega book sale in July.

Cynthia Riggs

Through the years, our land on Chappaquiddick has yielded some surprises. My peach tree began as a volunteer in a friend’s garden, a sprout from her compost pile.

Margaret Knight

Hawaiian Punch and ruby Twizzlers...

D.A.W.

One foggy July day at Lucy Vincent Beach, my four baby-sitting charges and I built a sand castle. It was my first summer on the Island.

Luanne Rice

I feel as if I’m in graduate school and Martha’s Vineyard is my field of study.

Nicki Miller

Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, an Aquinnah Wampanoag, graduated from Harvard College in 1665, the first Native American to earn an undergraduate degree there. This excerpt from Caleb’s Crossing, a new historical novel by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Geraldine Brooks, imagines Caleb’s first encounter with the book’s fictional young narrator, Bethia Mayfield, the daughter of an early Island minister.

Peonies and rambling roses...

D.A.W.

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