The Key Note: A Novel

On a windswept island off the coast of Maine, Miss Priscilla Burridge runs her boarding house with pragmatic firmness, butted heads with the sea, and fielded complaints from her idealistic young boarder Diana Wilbur, who sees magic in every sunset. When summer brings the handsome young singer Philip Barrison to their door, the inn's quiet rhythms shift. But it's not romance that transforms this place - it's the discovery of a battered boy hidden in the island's margins, and the vacationers who refuse to look away. Burnham, writing in the hopeful aftermath of the Great War, weaves a story about what happens when ordinary people choose to protect the vulnerable instead of minding their own business. The key note here is not a song, though Philip sings beautifully, but the sound of people deciding to be decent. It's a warm, old-fashioned novel that believes goodness is worth dramatizing, that summer islands can be places of healing, and that even the most practical hearts can learn to sing.