The Cliffs

In 1837, Eliza is three, and her sister, Emily, is five when their father takes them to the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake. He “signed the indenture that said [they] would live here, as Shakers, until [they] were eighteen because he could no longer manage on his own” (289). He stopped visiting after Eliza turned seven.

Eliza and her sister live in the children’s dormitory and engage in the community’s routines. The community takes in whoever appears there: “[E]scaped slaves came, abused wives, families who had lost every penny” (293). People come and go freely, but the core group stays, including “children adopted out of orphanages or collected from poorhouses” (294). Children of their generation, who have no families, usually leave when they turn 18. However, they’re always reminded that because of the Shaker rule of celibacy, their choice of whether to stay or go affects the health and continuation of the entire community.

When Eliza is 11 years old, she goes with Sister Florence to Poland Springs to sell their “fancy goods.” There, two Indigenous women, dressed in traditional clothing, are selling baskets. She notices how people stare and whisper about the women and then notices that they do the same thing about her and Sister Florence, dressed in their traditional Shaker garb. Eliza also sees parents and children together. That night, she cries.

Eliza and Emily decide that Emily will stay in the community after she turns 18, and when Eliza turns 18, they’ll leave together. However, when the time comes, Emily decides to stay, and Eliza leaves without her.

Eliza moves to Portland and works in a bonnet factory. The people who live next to her fight constantly, and her boss scares her. She’s surprised by the world’s brutality outside the Shaker community and begins to view her time there, which was filled with kindness, differently.

A woman named Agnes Foster comes into the shop often. One day, Agnes asks Eliza if she would like to work for her sister, Hannah. Hannah, who lives in a “quiet house by the sea” (300), needs help at home because she’s pregnant and on bed rest. Her husband, Samuel, is a sea captain and will be gone for several months.

Eliza travels to the house. Hannah’s sister-in-law, Alice, answers the door and shows Eliza to her bedroom, behind a hidden door. It’s a strange little room, but the ocean view is beautiful. It’s the first time she has had her own bedroom.

Life is quiet at the house, and Eliza spends her time working and writing letters to Emily. Hannah often sits in a chair, looking out the window. Eliza thinks she’s looking out to sea, thinking of Samuel, but one day she realizes that Hannah is looking at a small family cemetery. When she investigates, she sees two small gravestones for children, both of whom lived less than a year.

The night Hannah goes into labor, it’s too late to call the doctor. The baby lives for two days. After he dies, Hannah holds him for a day before the doctor takes him away. After they leave, a blizzard traps Eliza and Hannah in the house. Hannah mourns intensely, and Eliza comforts her, sleeping with her and holding her.

When Samuel returns in the spring, he tries to comfort Hannah. Eliza can tell he loves Hannah, but he doesn’t seem to understand what she’s going through. He brings gifts from his trip, including a set of beautiful jade green china, but Hannah shows no interest. Samuel obviously has hurt feelings. Before he leaves for his next trip, he arranges for a photograph of himself and Hannah.

When he leaves, Eliza is relieved but can’t tell whether Hannah misses him. A letter from Emily informs Eliza that their father died. After his death, Emily was contacted by a woman claiming to be his daughter from another marriage. Eliza is upset at the news that their father is dead, even though he disappeared from her life long ago. When she tells Hannah about her father’s abandonment, Hannah wonders how a parent could do that; she has longed for children. They talk all night, and Hannah kisses Eliza on the cheek before leaving her bedroom.

When Hannah is well enough, she resumes eating in the dining room and insists that Eliza join her. Eliza makes a hat for Hannah. When Hannah hugs her, Eliza feels like she’s never felt before. The summer is a joyous time for them. Eliza tells Hannah that the Shaker community called her Sister Eliza, and from then on Hannah calls her that.

They discover that Hannah is pregnant. Her daughter, Fannie, is born healthy and strong. Hannah is terrified that Fannie will die, and on her first birthday, she kisses Eliza in celebration. It’s Eliza’s first kiss, and she feels “ecstasy.”

Three months later, Samuel returns. Eliza feels jealous and angry, though she knows it’s irrational. Four months later, he leaves again for three years, on his first journey as a captain. Nine months after he leaves, Hannah gives birth to James. When Samuel finds out, his letters indicate plans to bring Hannah and the children on his next voyage.

Hannah and Eliza fall into a rhythm in which both act as mothers to the children. Hannah tells Eliza she loves her, and they sleep together every night. They never talk about their relationship—it feels so natural that they don’t feel the need to discuss it.

When Samuel sends a letter saying that he’s coming home, Hannah begins preparing for his return. The day that the Providence is due to return, they make a lunch to welcome him, setting the table with the green china, and take the children to the beach to watch the ship come in.

However, the seas are rough, and the town’s residents watch in horror as the ship capsizes and breaks apart. Over the next days, bodies wash ashore, both the men from the town and unidentified strangers. Hannah buries Samuel in the family cemetery next to their deceased children. After the funeral, Hanna takes Eliza’s hand and asks her to stay. Eliza admits that she never intended to leave. For the next 12 years, Eliza and Hannah live together, raising the children.

One day, Hannah’s sister, Agnes, arrives with a man named Leonard Crosby. Crosby is writing an article on the US surgeon general, William Hammond, who is debunking Spiritualism. Hammond has been collecting amputated body parts from the Civil War for use in research. Agnes believes that men who try to avoid enlistment are cowards, including pacifists like the Shakers.

Agnes marries Crosby, who becomes more interested in the surgeon general’s work. He begins “hunting the skulls and body parts” (324) of Indigenous people in the Awadapquit area to give Hammond. He describes how Hammond’s men dig up Indigenous graves, excusing the abhorrent practice by saying that Indigenous people will be extinct soon and preserving their remains ensures that they’ll be a part of history.

Eliza is stunned when Crosby begins his own collection of Indigenous remains and artifacts, but it doesn’t bother Hannah. When Eliza brings it up, Hannah reflects that Indigenous people killed her ancestors, and Samuel was descended from Ephraim Littleton, who was burned inside his home on that very property. Hannah tells Eliza that her bedroom behind the hidden door was originally built to hide from a possible attack.

Over the years, Eliza and Hannah support their household by sewing, making candles, and sometimes hosting a boarder. Seventeen years after coming to Hannah’s home, Eliza dies of consumption (tuberculosis) at age 38. Hannah remembers hovering over her body and seeing Agnes cut a lock of her hair, which she later put into a ring inscribed “Not Lost But Gone Before” (329) and gave it to Hannah. Hannah buries Eliza in the family cemetery under a “simple fieldstone” inscribed “Sister Eliza.” After many years, Hannah puts the ring in a box, along with letters, the bonnet Eliza made, and the photograph of herself and Samuel, and puts the box in Eliza’s bedroom.

Eliza’s spirit remains with the house until Hannah and her children are gone but then returns to Sabbathday Lake. She remains there for over a century, occasionally returning to the house. She felt another spirit at the house, one that was already there when she died, who remains at the edge of the cliff, watching the sea. Daisy, too, is there, trying to get a message to her mother.

Jane wakes to a man banging on her door and shouting her name. She meant to have only one drink the night before, but when Lydia Beazley asked her to share a bottle of wine, she agreed after she couldn’t get the bartender’s attention for a seltzer. That is all she remembers.

She finds several voicemails and text messages from David and sees that he’s the man outside. Realizing it’s the middle of the night, she opens the door. However, David moves to get in his car. He tells her that she called him incessantly, screaming into his voicemail, but didn’t answer his return calls. He drove from Boston to make sure she was okay, but now he’s going home.

He plays the messages, in which she screamed that she hates him and knows he never loved her. Jane doesn’t feel any of the terrible things she said. As they talk, a truck drives by. Jane doesn’t hear Walter barking and realizes that he isn’t there.

They look for Walter for hours. David takes her to the cove, where she hopes she left her car. It’s still there. She drives to Abe Adams’s boat, and he tells her that he’s sure that Jane had Walter when she left the bar. Eventually, David leaves for Boston. Jason, Allison, and Chris join in the search for Walter.

Jane doesn’t tell Allison that she drank because she can’t bear the look of disappointment she would get. She confides that she thinks she finally scared David off, but Allison points out that he drove to Maine in the middle of the night and helped her look for Walter.

Jane goes to Lydia’s toy store. Lydia says that the night before, Jane shared her ideas for incorporating Indigenous history into the historical society and badmouthed Thomas Crosby. She gives Jane a large thermos to take on her search. Jane sits on a bench in the local cemetery and when she takes a sip, she finds that it’s a Bloody Mary. After a moment, she takes another sip. She thinks about the importance of cemeteries and gets angry again about Genevieve’s pool.

Finishing the Bloody Mary, she drives to Genevieve’s house. Genevieve is having a party, and Jane asks to speak to her in private. She tells Genevieve that everyone knows she dug up a cemetery and that she deserves to be haunted. Genevieve’s husband, Paul, interrupts, demanding to know what’s going on.

That night, Jane sits on her mother’s back deck and cries about Walter, her mother, David, and even her job. She’s ashamed and realizes that writing it all down might help her make sense of her life. She begins with her freshman year of college: She first drank after getting a bad grade on a paper. Once she started, she didn’t stop. She first blacked out two months later, but it just seemed funny.

She continued to drink after graduation. Usually she stopped after a few drinks, but she never knew when things were going to get out of hand. She continued to experience blackouts and sometimes thought about quitting but never took it seriously. As she got older, the hangovers got worse, and she embarrassed herself and hurt people she loved. Her work never suffered, however. Melissa, her boss, didn’t know about her drinking.

When Jane met David, she realized that she couldn’t drink as much around him: Their relationship meant too much to her. David didn’t think it was funny or entertaining when she drank, so Jane began hiding it. Four years after they met, they got married in a small ceremony and drank champagne to celebrate. The next morning, Jane had no memory of the night.

On their first anniversary, Jane drank most of the bottle of wine they ordered and then ordered another. She woke up on the couch with bloody knees. David told her that she fell in the restaurant and shouted at him. Jane stopped drinking for six months. She was sober through the holidays and into February, even booking a vacation for them.

Jane drank lightly in Turks and Caicos but could feel David’s disapproval. Once they got home, she continued with “sensible drinking” until she ran into an old friend from grad school. They went out, and Jane woke up in a bar bathroom, alone. The next morning, Jane found photographs on her phone, taken by her friend, of her kissing a guy in the bar. She deleted them, remembering that David’s first wife cheated on him and he feared that more than anything.

After that, Jane drank only once or twice a year. However, after her mother died, her drinking got out of control again. David pointed out that she was missing work, which was new. She tried to explain it as stress and promised to see a therapist after a big work event she was overseeing.

All her colleagues and the organization’s board members were present at the event, which went flawlessly. Afterward, Jane was so relieved that she had a drink. When David suggested that they leave, she was annoyed and stayed when he went home. She remembered having some champagne with one of her younger employees. The next morning, she didn’t remember what happened.

At work, everyone avoided her, and Melissa called Jane into her office. Jane admitted that she didn’t remember what happened the night before. Melissa told her that she was “making out” with the younger employee in front of everyone, including the press. When Melissa tried to stop her, Jane got belligerent and left with the young man. She told Jane to go home until she decided how to handle it.

The following week, Melissa told Jane she would be charged with sexual harassment and put her on unpaid leave. Melissa said they would pay for Jane to go to rehab, but Jane refused to go because rehab implied “rock-bottom.”

Telling David was the hardest thing she’d ever done. They tried couples therapy, but the therapist suggested that Jane get into a 12-step program, and they never went back. Jane finally suggested that she leave, expecting David to resist, but he didn’t. Jane “left for Maine the next day” (371).