We’ve been vaca­tion­ing by the Cape Cod seashore, at a fam­ily home over­look­ing a tidal marsh and a bay watered by the Nan­tucket Sound.

On sum­mer days this bay is alive with kayaks, sail­boats, power­boats and jet skis, echo­ing with the sounds of fam­i­lies at play. After Labor Day plea­sure boats drowse at docks and moor­ings, except for after­noons and week­ends when the locals reclaim their bay. By now the calls of osprey, gulls and great blue herons have replaced man-made sounds from boat­ing and water sports.

We rel­ish sail­ing and kayak­ing these waters in the golden light of Sep­tem­ber. But when fog or rain rolls in, we turn to books and mag­a­zines. Quiet moments shel­ter­ing from the rain, lux­u­ri­at­ing in “slow read” books, tales that unfold slowly. We find our­selves set­ting aside pulp fic­tion bet­ter suited for cross-coun­try flights. Instead we savor mem­oirs and sto­ries with imagery and prose that delight the mind’s eye and charm the tongue like a multi-lay­ered fine wine. Well-crafted writ­ing that takes time and atten­tion to be appre­ci­ated.

Two such books have enchanted me this vaca­tion:

• Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Paja­mas and Found Hap­pi­ness by Dominique Brown­ing
• Sloop: Restor­ing My Fam­i­ly’s Wooden Sail­boat by Daniel Robb

Both are writ­ten by New Eng­land authors fac­ing per­sonal rein­ven­tion and dis­cov­ery in midlife, what Slow Love’s author calls “the inter­tidal years.”

Slow Love, A Life Story to Savor

Dominique Brown­ing is the for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of the now defunct House & Gar­den mag­a­zine. In 2007 she was laid off from her job when Condé Nast decided to fold the mag­a­zine. Slow Love describes her strug­gles with self-esteem, iden­tity and loss of pur­pose after being thrust abruptly into unem­ploy­ment. Her pain is com­pounded by more uni­ver­sal midlife griefs:

At the start of this jour­ney, all I could think about was loss: lost work; my chil­dren who had left home; my par­ents slip­ping into their last years. Lost love, on top of it all, because I was finally forced to con­front the fail­ure of a rela­tion­ship that had pre­oc­cu­pied me for seven years.

— From Slow Love by Dominique Brown­ing

After los­ing her NYC salary, Dominique reluc­tantly sells her “For­ever House” just out­side Man­hat­tan. She moves to a mod­est cot­tage on the Rhode Island shore where she learns how to cre­ate a slower, sim­pler but richer life. Liv­ing sim­ply and in a less expen­sive place enables her to live on what she earns as a writer, blog­ger and con­sul­tant while focus­ing atten­tion on the things, peo­ple and places that she loves. She quips: “Slow love is about know­ing what you’ve got before it’s gone.”

Dominique has crafted a life filled with sim­pler joys: gar­den­ing, cook­ing, read­ing, swim­ming, kayak­ing, and cher­ish­ing moments spent with friends and fam­ily. Today she shares the joys of “her inter­tidal years” via her blog, Slow Love Life.

This is one of many pas­sages in Slow Love that spoke to me:

The edge of the sea has many voices, … some boom­ing, some fran­tic, some crash­ing. But the voice I respond most deeply to, lis­ten most closely to, is one that whis­pers: a susurra­tion of water rif­fling across clack­ing stone, min­gled with breezes catch­ing in the high grass of the dunes. After years of first find­ing and then finally hear­ing and under­stand­ing what that voice can teach me, I have just begun to accept the relent­less flux that is the con­di­tion of my life, of all our lives. Not young, not old; not betrothed, not alone; think­ing back, look­ing for­ward; not bro­ken, not quite whole any­more, either. But present. These are my inter­tidal years.

— From Slow Love by Dominique Brown­ing

Sloop

Although Sloop is also a mem­oir, it tells a dif­fer­ent story: what it’s like to live and work on Cape Cod while learn­ing how to restore a clas­sic wooden sail­boat that has been in the author’s fam­ily since 1939. The boat at the heart of this story is a “twelve-and-a-half” sloop designed by Her­reshoff — a clas­sic Amer­i­can trea­sure in the eyes of wooden boat lovers.

Like many peo­ple who live year round on Cape Cod, author Daniel Robb cob­bles together a liv­ing from mul­ti­ple sources; in his case, from car­pen­try, roof­ing, writ­ing, teach­ing and act­ing stints in nearby sum­mer reper­tory the­aters.

At first he under­takes the sail­boat restora­tion project as an oppor­tu­nity to earn some money. Daniel Robb pitches the idea of restor­ing his fam­i­ly’s vin­tage sail­boat and writ­ing about the expe­ri­ence to his pub­lisher, who approves the project con­cept.

But the quest to restore the derelict boat quickly becomes much more than a way to spend time and earn some much-needed income. Even when he’s “off Cape” earn­ing money, the author is pre­oc­cu­pied with the chal­lenges pre­sented by the sail­boat restora­tion project.

We learn that “it takes a vil­lage” to restore a 1939 wooden sail­boat. It demands resource­ful solu­tions and access to raw mate­ri­als that are hard to come by. Trips to marine spe­cialty sup­pli­ers in New Bed­ford, places that were thriv­ing 150 years ago before steam dis­placed ships pow­ered by wind.

The author spends hours over tea and cof­fee, seek­ing advice from local boat­builders and arti­sans who under­stand the art and sci­ence of build­ing ocean-wor­thy craft from wooden com­po­nents and met­als that resist cor­ro­sion. Peo­ple who know mod­ern work-arounds when orig­i­nal equip­ment or mate­ri­als can no longer be found. Robb learns through trial and error, some­times the hard way — for exam­ple, what it takes to bend wood into curv­ing frames and ribs.

I loved the story because it takes place not far from our Cape Cod home, in set­tings that we’ve vis­ited with our broth­ers and sis­ters. My hus­band loved it in part because he owns a mod­ern repro­duc­tion of a 12 1/2 sloop; his 10-year-old Bul­l’s Eye fea­tures a hull based on tem­plates designed by Her­reshoff.

We both loved Sloop for its insights into rela­tion­ships, crafts­man­ship, exper­tise shar­ing, and the wry ways in which New Eng­lan­ders offer advice and crit­i­cism. It’s a “down home” kind of story. Per­fect for a rainy day.