How one woman tells us so much about Freedom, Feminism, and Environmental Stewardship (Fellowship Point, imaginary haven on the coast of Maine. Also Philadelphia and NYC’s Village, 2000 – 2008; backstory early 1960s): Fellowship Point reads and feels like a literary masterpiece. One of the most satisfying novels I’ve ever read.

Elegantly written with such welcoming prose and soothing broad-mindedness, nearing 600 pages and you’ll still wish it never ends. Because you’ll lose yourself in, dwell in, the highly-principled and independent world of eighty-year-old Agnes Lee.

Envisioned twenty-years ago, ten years in the writing, Alice Elliott Dark couldn’t have imagined how much her bighearted feminist novel – entwined with her best friend Polly she grew up with in Philadelphia, also eighty – would mean to so many of us when a woman’s freedom to choose the direction of her life has been torn asunder. Although Agnes will swear, “I never realized I was a feminist. I realized I was a person, a human being, with desires and needs and talents and abilities – the same as everyone else.”

The thing is Agnes isn’t like everyone else. A contrarian who marches to her own beat, she might intimidate you at first, until you get to know her and are struck by how deeply she cares about the existential things in life; her friendships, never wanting to “lose sight of the good people;” and the beauty and bounty of Nature – her “serenity.” Dark wants us to know Agnes as well as she does. The wholly unorthodox Aunt we wish we had, or if you’re really lucky, cherish.

As a fourth-generation Quaker from the city of Liberty and Love, Dark’s second novel is a literary work of art, embodying the spiritual values of a movement that believes in Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship. Agnes lives and breathes this moral code and philosophy without being religious at all. Hear these values described below:

“What makes you happy?” “What is free will?” “Or freedom?” “Or will?” “What is a soul mate?” we’re asked. So when Agnes wonders, “Who cares about an old lady?” you’ll want to shout out that you do! She has so much to tell us about how to live your life on your terms. How to celebrate the complexities of life with all the grace and dignity you can muster. To care about “making the world kinder.” To be honest with yourself and the actions of others. How to survive unbearable sorrow. To not give up even when the odds seem hopeless. To value “sticking up for yourself,” and others. To give and love as much as you can but not expect the same in return, although if reciprocated, maybe not the way you expected, it’s still beautiful.

Agnes and Polly have chosen very different destinies mostly because their personalities are very different. Agnes chose singlehood; Polly marriage, motherhood, and now reaping the joys of grandparenthood. Polly knows Agnes doesn’t care much for her self-absorbed husband, Dick, and how Polly is so “cowed” to him. Agnes tells it right. You won’t like him either. Nor her eldest of three sons, James, an investment banker, who presents a significant roadblock to the environmental cause, activism, and sensitivities Agnes’ possesses and pays homage to.

For 150 years, her ancestors managed to protect a fictional spit of land on the coast of Maine named Fellowship Point. A “hallowed thirty-five acre tip on the peninsula” nicknamed the Sank, short for Sanctuary. Preserved by a fellowship of five friends and their families, today it’s in grave jeopardy as not all five current members have the same conservancy agenda. Agnes is dogged in this pursuit, but Polly is torn between her allegiance to her and her three children. 

Agnes epitomizes the best of what it means to fully embrace a “personal religion of sisterhood with trees, flowers, birds, squirrels, rocks, and even snakes.” A laudatory theme about caring for the environment like we should care about people.

The other threat is ageist attitudes towards Polly by her children, and Agnes’ diagnosis of cancer, which we learn of early on. Do not assume Agnes’ fate is sealed because she has a lot of living to do! When she asks, “How do you achieve enlightenment?” she’s letting us know she’s far more enlightened than most of us. Her tale of all-embracing fellowship shows the “upsides and downsides” of how she achieved that. 

Agnes celebrates the best we can be even if our lives turned out not to be as we hoped. “What are you grateful for?” she asks. She’s “grateful for another day, for writing and for the sea.” A beloved children’s author of the When Nan series. When another female character enters her self-determined life early on in the novel, a persistent one who doesn’t give up – twenty-seven-year-old editorial assistant Maud Silver who works at the publishing house that’s produced “dozens” of the When Nan books – she’s curious who Nan is and how she understands children so well when she’s never had a child of her own. As Nan’s profoundly moving story rolls out, along with the charming, developing relationship between young and old, we see the dramatic meaning of sisterhood and motherhood.

Agnes isn’t afraid to speak her mind yet she’s kept some secrets even from Polly, despite not being able to “quantify” how much Polly’s friendship has meant to her over the course of her life. There’s other meaningful female relationships too: Agnes’ younger sister, Elspeth, whom we meet through her loving diary-like letters and notebooks, diverting from the 3^rd person narrative; and her loyal, long-time, gatekeeper/housekeeper Sylvie. (The Lees were wealthy but it was “bad manners” to be showy). Agnes also has male relationships that matter too, some heartening, heartbreaking, and vexing.

Opening with a handy imaginary map of the Maine coastal area, on the west side you’ll see Agnes’ Leeward Cottage, Polly’s Meadowlea next door, and a shared graveyard that keeps the spirits of those they’ve loved and lost near. Archie Lee, Agnes’ cousin, lives south of Polly at Westerlee with his wife who offends Agnes’ values. They also own a flamboyant mansion on the eastern side, Easterlee, which overuses the region’s distinctive granite rock with pink coloring. This dislikable duo commit and enable a terrible injustice towards Agnes and Polly’s mutual friend Richard Circumstance, who they defend staunchly.

Armchair atmospheric, this is the “boom of the ocean” Maine, with its “mossy forest floor, the dun-colored needles, the expressive tree bark, this slowed-down world.” The place where Agnes “felt – free.” Freedom is what Agnes exemplifies.

Caring for both the land and the Abenaki Indigenous tribe who settled on it before anyone else, the Maine Coast Heritage Trust is cited since it represents the preservation vision Agnes has for Fellowship Point. An environmental activist’s message from an author who spent summers in Maine. 

Agnes is also the one who brings us so much nostalgia. She affects us when she asks why girls who “giggled” and felt “blasts of joy” ceased “playing and running?” when “we loved it so much.”

Like Maine, Fellowship Point is a state of mind. Agnes’ state of mind will live in our hearts and minds for a long time. That’s why this novel is a masterpiece.

Lorraine