Five years ago, with the pandemic loosening its grip and all of us trying to remember what normal had looked like, Jillian Cantor turned out the lights, locked the front door, and went looking for it ...
… in Coronado, the charming beach-side enclave two miles and 50 years ago west of downtown San Diego.
“We’d been going to Coronado almost every summer since our kids were little,” Cantor recalled. “After the pandemic, we found a house we could rent for a week and went back. It was wonderful, beautiful, everything I’d remembered from before.”
The broad, rugged beach … the shops along Orange Avenue … the peaceful silence of Glorietta Bay at night.
Tucson author Jillian Cantor on the beach in Coronado, California, with her new book that is set there.
Cantor was there only a week, but this time she returned to Tucson with more than fresh memories and new photos. She had the setting for a new book, “The May House,” which debuts this Tuesday, May 12, from Atria/Simon & Schuster.
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Cantor’s 14th novel, “The May House,” features three sisters who inherit their grandmother’s grand old house in Coronado.
“The condition is that they use it to spend time together,” Cantor said, “so they agree to come back the same week every year … like they did when they were kids. Then, one year, one of them doesn’t show up.”
Told by the sisters themselves, the story evolves over 30 years, the composite showing how they managed to drift apart … before reconnecting and saving one another in the end.
Readers who are familiar with Coronado will feel right at home, with scenes set in a number of local landmarks: Clayton’s Coffee, Coronado Playhouse, even a subtle reference to “Some Like It Hot,” which starred Marilyn Monroe and was filmed at the Hotel Del.
“There’s a lot of Coronado in it,” Cantor noted.
There’s a lot of Cantor in it, too.
Tucson author Jillian Cantor with her newest book, “The May House,” which debuts this Tuesday, May 12, from Atria/Simon & Schuster.
While she has edged from historic to contemporary fiction in recent years, Cantor is known for stories about resilient women.
She found both her voice and her audience with a series of novels featuring women forgotten by history: Anne Frank’s sister in “Margot,” Ethel Rosenberg in “The Hours Count,” Marie Curie in “Half Life.”
“The Lost Letter,” with fictional characters surviving World War II, became a bestseller. So did “Beautiful Little Fools,” which explored the “then what?” for the women of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
Cantor’s last three books — “The Fiction Writer,” “The Greatest Lie of All” and now “The May House” — are modern mysteries infused with heroine heroics.
“As different as they might seem, all my books have things in common,” Cantor said. “They’re usually about women, a lot of times sisters, who have a mystery to solve and a love story to find. I’m not really changing what I’m doing, I’m just making things different enough to keep them interesting to write about.”
She admits that writing “The May House” was, at least in part, therapeutic.
“When I start working on a new book, I know I’ll be spending two or three years with these people, living the life they live,” Cantor said. “Spending that time in a place I like, even though I’m sitting at my desk in Tucson, made it pretty special.”
Interestingly, she can draw a jagged line from Coronado and “The May House” to an earlier work.
“When I was little, 9 or 10, I remember writing a story about two sisters. One of them had a secret. She knew the family was moving, I think. You’d have to ask my mom. She has all my little-kid stories in a folder she keeps in my old room.”
A product of suburban Philadelphia and Penn State, Cantor has been a Tucsonan since 2000, when she enrolled in the University of Arizona’s creative writing program.
She taught at UA for a time, then Pima College. Her first book, “The September Sisters,” debuted in 2009, and her catalog has been growing steadily ever since.
Indeed, Cantor will launch another new book this summer. “The Season of Light and Darkness,” a dystopian tale for young adults, will be released Aug. 4 by Simon Pulse.
“I actually started writing it 10 years ago, and my agent thought it was too far-fetched,” Cantor said. “I pulled it out again a couple of years ago, and with the world what it is now she had no problem with it at all.”
As for the rest of the summer, Cantor said her summer plans are still uncertain, but here’s a spoiler alert. There’s this bookstore called Bay Books at 1007 Orange Ave.
In Coronado.
Stacks Book Club will host a launch party for Cantor and “The May House” Tuesday night at 6:30. For tickets, which include the price of the book, visit stacksbookclub.com.
Footnotes
- Antigone Books has been listed among America’s best independent bookstores by Condé Nast Traveler. In a story posted April 25, Condé Nast applauded the women owners who have kept its defiant feminist spirit alive for 53 years. “Antigone remains a no-frills stronghold where community organizers trade flyers near the entrance and the inventory captures life in a vibrant border city. By emphasizing local voices … Antigone preserves Tucson’s rugged soul.”
- Atria’s first-edition press run for “The May House” is 75,000 copies.
- The newly expanded and fully renovated Richard Elias Mission Library reopened last week. Located at 3770 S. Mission Road, the library had been closed 14 months for a major facelift. It is now open six days a week, daily except Sundays.
- The University of Arizona Poetry Century will move to its summer schedule on May 23. It will be open Tuesdays through Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., until September.
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