Down East Girl — Julie Davis

Lily McIntyre grows up wild and free on Harkers Island, playing pirate and making up stories with her cousin and best friend, Red. Their idyllic life is shattered when a storm destroys her father's fishing boat, crippling him and drowning Red's brother. Lily retreats to the world of books, dreaming of romance and passion. Believing she's found it in handsome Henry Taylor, a university professor, she marries him and moves to a college town, only to find that his troubled past makes true intimacy impossible. When Henry is called up at the beginning of World War II, Lily returns to the coast, discovering that her heart belongs to Red, now married with a family of his own. They struggle to put their families' needs above their own passion, but it continually threatens to pull them under.