By LaKeshia N. Myers
Representative LaKeshia Myers
As is my summertime custom, I try to read at least three books for pleasure. Even during all of the summer activities on my plate, I did take time to read (or in this case, listen to, thanks to Audible) a book I had anticipated since last summer. The book was Summer on Highland Beach by daytime talk host and attorney, Sunny Hostin.
This book, the third installation in her “summer beach series,” focuses on the town of Highland Beach, Maryland. The town was founded late in the 19th century by affluent African Americans from Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, looking for a summer retreat on the Chesapeake Bay. In 1893 Major Charles Remond Douglass, Frederick Douglass’s son, and his wife, Laura, had been turned away from a restaurant at the nearby Bay Ridge resort because of their race. After being turned away, Maj. Douglass decided to buy beachfront property directly south of Bay Ridge and sell lots to family and friends.
Maj. Douglass bought a 40-acre tract with 500 feet of beachfront on the Chesapeake Bay from Daniel Brashears, a Black farmer and waterman of Anne Arundel County, and turned it into a summer enclave. He had two homes built – one for himself, his wife, and their children, and one as a retirement home for his father, Frederick Douglass, which was known as “Twin Oaks.” While the elder Douglass died before the home’s completion, it still stands and is a site on the National Register of Historic Places.
Hostin’s book continues the story of Olivia Jones, a central character in her earlier books. This book focuses on her learning about her identity and her connection to abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The story is an equal mix of drama, complex love stories, forgiveness, and understanding that the past (even a hidden past) can be prologue.
Sunny Hostin is a brilliant writer. Her ability to weave historical notations into prose is exemplary. Highland Beach served as the perfect literary backdrop for the story. It helped me get over my own summer beach withdrawal, as I did not travel to Martha’s Vineyard this year. All in all, this book was a 10/10, I definitely recommend it.