Elin Hilderbrand is the author of a number of novels that are all set on Nantucket island, her home. “I have lived on Nantucket for.. years now,.. I arrived in the summer of 1993… I immediately understood that I belonged on the island, that it was my home… What I like best about Nantucket.. is the fact that it is an authentic place. There are no stoplights, no chains of any kind, no strip malls or fast food restaurants. It is original, singular, unique.”

Hilderbrand grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket. She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.  A busy wife and mother of three, she is also the Director of The Nantucket Preservation Trust. 

Her first novel, The Beach Club, features Mack Peterson, a man originally from Iowa who has been managing the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel for eleven years. As the new season begins, he considers whether he would like to buy the hotel he manages.

Barefoot: A Novel is currently #5 on the New York Times Bestseller’s List for paperback fiction (July 1, 2008).  It is the story of three women all trying to escape their troubled lives by vacationing in Nantucket. Burdened with small children, unwieldy straw hats, and some obvious emotional issues, the women--two sisters and one friend--make their way to the sisters' tiny cottage, inherited from an aunt. The fourth main character is Josh, a 21 year old local boy whom Vicki hires as a babysitter for her two children.  Soon Josh becomes the women’s confidant, and, eventually, a lover to one of them.

WRITINGS:

• The Beach Club (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.
• Nantucket Nights (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2002.
• Summer People (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2003.
• The Blue Bistro (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2005.
• The Love Season (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2006.
• Barefoot: A Novel, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2007.

Sources:

Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2007.

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/love_season2.asp#bio

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Barefoot/Elin-Hilderbrand/e/9780316018586

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Escondido Public Library.
 Revised: 09/19/08.