In March on Block Island you might have a series of rainy days followed by an early spring stunner, sunshine all over, crocuses thinking about poking their heads out. The next day you could have a wind kicking up from the southeast, holding the ferries back. Temperatures could be in the forties or in the sixties or the thirties or the seventies.

Almost nothing was open. Well, Joy Bombs was, from seven o’clock to ten o’clock each morning so the locals could get a cup of coffee before they walked their dogs on the beach or caught the ferry to the mainland for some shopping or took their places in the various year-round island businesses—the schools, the police station, the medical center. The post office was open full-time, as was the diner at the airport, and the bookstore managed to find enough customers three days a week. The Spring House Hotel served dinner Wednesday through Saturday.

Maggie’s school hours were regular, and she was surprisingly busy with after-school sports or other activities. On the weeks when Anthony retrieved Max from Cassie on the mainland and brought him to the island they felt like a real family, the four of them. They went sledding in front of the Spring House Hotel and iceboating on Sachem Pond.

It took Anthony some time after his father’s death to convince Dorothy that theirs was a story that needed to be told. In the abstract, she was uncertain. Her grief was tremendous, all-consuming, palpable, and complicated, like all grief is. Then he showed her the first three chapters when he was home for a visit. She poured a glass of scotch, disappeared into Leonard’s study, and turned up the Puccini. An hour or so later she found Anthony in the kitchen and pressed the pages into his hand.

“Do it,” she said, her eyes damp. “Keep going. Write it.”

And he would. He did. Finally, after such a long time of trying and failing, Anthony Puckett had something to say.

Fame and Infamy: A Memoir of a Father and a Son was harder to write than both of Anthony’s novels combined. He showed an early draft to Huxley Wilder, whose belief in Anthony returned once he had his twenty grand and a promising new manuscript. After he read the draft, Huxley swooned. (Not literally.) Huxley was eager to start shopping the book around. He began dropping hints about it during his various lunches with editors. He had nine editors from six different houses drooling over it before the manuscript was ready to submit. And they both knew that early attention like that could drive a book up and up and up, all the way to the sky.

Chococoa Baking Company Chocolate with Creamy Vanilla Buttercream Filling Whoopie Pie

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 large egg

2 cups all-purpose (or gluten-free) flour

½ cup Dutch process chocolate

1¼ tsp baking soda

Pinch of salt