“Call me Becca…”

Here’s my feeble attempt to display the outline of Martha’s Vineyard Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. The Vineyard is the setting of MOBY RICH, a story I’m writing that is now appearing in serialized form in the Vineyard Gazette, in “real time” (each chapter appears the day the events of the chapter take place). This is, to put it mildly, a challenge. A further challenge is my hubristic audacity in hanging the novella on Melville’s iconic tome, including entire chapters that wander away from the plot.
The premise of my story is simple: a native islander returns home after many years in the Big City, to work for her family’s landscaping business. She soon realizes that the family patriarch has a monomania about an off-island corporation, which he believes has already wronged him and intends him, and the entire island, further harm. Unlike the original Moby Dick, this story is light-hearted and even irreverent. It incorporates real contemporary Vineyard events and life. Although the narrator (Becca) is not me, she’s working on a project that I’ve always thought about doing: keeping track of what’s in season when – flowers, trees, medicinal plants, but especially edible plants. I HOPE to use this blog as “Becca’s blog,” in a sense – to keep tally of what’s in season, to include seasonal photos (the island is gorgeous year-round, and I have a terrific camera), possibly to comment on Vineyard events I feel might be of interest or meaning to a broader readership.