Christopher Tilghman's first novel, Mason's Retreat, introduced readers to the Mason family and their pre-World War II life at the Retreat, their legendary estate on Chesapeake Bay. In The Right-Hand Shore, Tilghman reveals the earlier family history.
In 1922, Edward Mason is called to the Retreat by then-owner Miss Mary Bayly. She is dying and wishes to leave the estate to the closest direct descendant of the original immigrant owner. Her ownership comes through her mother, Ophelia, who hated the Retreat and left her husband, Wyatt, to do with it what he would.
From Mr. French, who has been property manager for years, Edward hears the family story, starting with Boss Mason selling all his slaves before Emancipation, a shameful episode that separated families forever.
Wyatt Bayly was a passionate orchardist who envisioned miles of peach trees on the Retreat. He and his employees, black and white, planted, pruned, tended and harvested for many productive years, until a blight took all of them and left Wyatt a broken man. Abel Terrell, a black freeman, performed or supervised the grafting of most of the trees. Abel's son, Randall, and Wyatt's son, Thomas, were best friends, closer than brothers--until Thomas's blossoming affection for Beal, Randall's sister, threatened to tear apart the natural order of things of that time.
Miss Mary tells Edward that he may claim the Retreat and tells him what happened to Randall, Thomas and Beal. Tilghman, in stunning and evocative prose, has written a carefully explored and beautifully nuanced saga that is at once heartbreaking and hopeful. --Valerie Ryan