49 pages • 1 hour read
The Beach Club
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Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death, pregnancy loss, child death, and mental illness.
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Opening”
Bill Elliott, the owner of the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel, is receiving mysterious letters from someone with the initials S. B. T. who wants to buy his property. Since Bill hopes to give the hotel to his daughter, Cecily, in the future, he doesn’t want to sell. Meanwhile, Mack Petersen, the hotel manager, is hiring and training staff for the summer. Now 30, Mack has been in Nantucket since the summer he turned 18, escaping Iowa shortly after his parents died in a car accident. He has a choice to make by the end of the summer: return to the family farm or stay on the island. Mack is also emotionally torn between two women: Maribel Cox, whom he has dated for six years, and Andrea Krane, who visits every summer for three weeks. Mack would like to settle down but can’t let go of the past. Even though he hears Nantucket calling to him, telling him that he’s “home,” he can’t quite commit to it.
Bill has recently been diagnosed with “angina, heart muscle pain, a warning” and is depressed by what he views as a decline toward death (9). His “doctor [has] recommended retirement” (9).
