The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club

The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club (2025) is a work of historical fiction by Martha Hall Kelly. The story is partly inspired by Kelly’s family, and as with her best-selling debut novel Lilac Girls (2016), it centers on women and World War II. The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club—Book Club, for short, in this guide—tackles themes such as The Power of Solidarity Among Women, Maintaining Compassion During Wartime, and The Tension Between Personal Dreams and Communal Responsibility.

The page numbers refer to the 2025 Ballantine Books e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, graphic violence, sexual content, child death, and racism.

Plot Summary

The narrative timeline shifts between 2016 and 1942. Sections set in 2016 are narrated by 34-year-old Marigold Violet Starwood, who leaves her disappointing life in Los Angeles to visit 90-year-old Elizabeth Devereaux, a famous painter, on her farm, Copper Pond Farm, on Martha’s Vineyard (an island in Massachusetts).

Mrs. Devereaux has agreed to give Mari a private painting lesson, but she has not divulged her true reason for agreeing to do so: Unbeknownst to Mari, Mrs. Devereaux is her grandmother. To explain how Mari is a part of Mrs. Devereaux’s family, Mrs. Devereaux returns to 1942, where the Smith sisters, 16-year-old Briar and 19-year-old Cadence become the alternating narrators.

Briar likes to wear men’s clothes and doesn’t avoid trouble. In the middle of World War II, she believes she spots German U-boats (short for unterseeboot or “undersea boat”); however, hardly anyone believes her. As Briar and Cadence lost their parents in a car accident, they live with Gram (their earnestly Christian grandmother) on Copper Pond Farm. They also have a brother, 20-year-old Tom, who fights in World War II as an Army Ranger. Tom is in a serious romantic relationship with Bess Stanhope. Once Tom leaves, Bess learns that she’s having a high-risk pregnancy.

Bess and Cadence are best friends. They work at an affluent club together. Bess comes from a well-off family, but her mother, Mrs. Stanhope, is toxic, so Bess leaves her privileged life to stay at the no-frills Copper Hill Pond. Mimicking the wealthier women, Bess and Cadence start a book club, the titular Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club. Simultaneously, Cadence and Bess develop popular, special-sized books, Armed Service Editions (ASEs), that soldiers can carry with them in combat. Cadence writes a column about her more rural, less ritzy part of Martha’s Vineyard, “Up-Island Happenings.” She dreams of moving to New York City and working in publishing. A well-connected island resident helps Cadence realize her goal.

Briar is friendly with the older neighbor, Mr. Schmidt. He’s German, and Briar finds a mysterious box in his home after he dies. Briar manages to open the box, finding Nazi photos and an elite SS ring (SS stands for Schutzstaffel—the Nazi paramilitary organization that enforces the party’s draconian laws and multiple genocides). Briar sells the ring to an older, ornery collector of war memorabilia, Sandra Granger. Soon, Sandra is dead.

One night, Briar finds a nearly drowned man, Peter Mueller, on the beach near her farm. She considers calling the authorities, but due to their condescending behavior, she waits. She brings Peter to the family boathouse, where she learns that he is an escapee from a German U-boat. He was born in Germany, and his family moved to Minnesota before returning to Germany. Peter hates Adolf Hitler and doesn’t intend to harm the women, who don’t know what to do. As the government has executed past Nazi spies, Briar believes they should hide him. Cadence disagrees.

Peter reminds the women that the authorities will conduct a comprehensive investigation and know that they didn’t hand him over right away. Fearing punishment, the women keep him, and Peter helps grow the profitable Burbank potatoes that Tom planted before he left. Peter also develops a romantic relationship with book club member Margaret Coutinho, with whom he will later elope.

Troops arrive Up-Island to use the land to prepare for an invasion of North Africa or Western Europe. Major John Gilbert leads the soldiers, a British officer who escaped a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp run by the Nazis. Briar believes Major Gilbert might be a Nazi spy. Cadence scolds Major Gilbert to his face and in her column for threatening to commandeer the Smith farmland. Soon, however, Major Gilbert and Cadence become romantically involved. 

Tyson Schmidt, Mr. Schmidt’s grandson, is the real spy. Tyson’s father gave him the SS ring, and Mr. Schmidt took it away, hoping to dissuade his grandson from his infatuation with Naziism. Briar discovers the truth and accuses Tyson of having killed his grandfather. Tyson doesn’t deny this accusation, but he does deny killing Sandra. Tyson has been secretly communicating with the Germans in Peter’s U-boat. They tell Tyson about Peter, and Tyson tries to extort Peter into coming back to Germany with him, where Peter will surely face execution for defecting.

Before leaving with Peter, an armed Tyson sets the Smith kitchen on fire. The women put it out while Peter disarms Tyson and kills him. Cadence, Margaret, Briar, and Bess help Peter bury the body. People don’t ask questions and assume Tyson went back to Germany.

To help the Smith family, Bess vows to never contact them again if her mother gives them $5,000. Mrs. Stanhope agrees. Due to the potatoes, the Smith farm flourishes. They become a dairy farm, and thanks to Major Gilbert, they sell their dairy products to the military. Authorities have told the Smiths that Tom is missing in action and presumed dead, but at the end of the novel, he appears at the farm, having been rescued by a French nun. Briar and Tom each never marry, and they spend their life together on the farm. Cadence marries Major Gilbert, and they live childless in New York City.

After Bess gives birth to a daughter, Mrs. Stanhope secretly puts the child up for adoption. She then tells Bess that her daughter died. Bess studies painting in France and marries a French person, but they divorce because she doesn’t want to have another child.

The novel closes in the 2016 timeline, where Mari officially learns that Bess is Mrs. Devereaux. Mari’s mother was Bess and Tom’s daughter, so Mrs. Devereaux (Bess) is Mari’s grandmother. Bess mostly kept her promise to stay away from the Smiths, but the novel reveals that Briar and Bess both hired private detectives to find one another. After Briar died, Briar’s detective found Bess to inform her that Briar had left Bess the farm. After some self-doubt, Mari agrees to take over the farm when Bess dies, so it’ll presumably stay in the family and away from predatory developers.