The story centers on Angela and Lutie, who have been married for over thirty years. Early in the book I chronicle their upbringings, while Angela was sheltered and filled with the good things of life, thanks to her mother's personality and desires, Lutie's was filled with hard work and the tragic deaths of his parents, and an eventual brutal period of service in Korea. After the war he puts himself through college and takes a banker's job in the very bank run by Angela's stepfather, and so they meet, fall in love and marry. After the death of Angela's mother, in the early eighties, the couple desides to accept the legacy she left of a fine home, on the Island of Martha's Vineyard, where much of Angela's growing up took place, and substantial investments to guarantee a genteel lifestyle. The transition from their home of three decades in Pittsburgh to a life of leisure on the Island takes some getting used to, but they soon come to enjoy it. In fact, before long Angela has taken on the mantle left by her mother as hostess and reknowned artist in the community. Meanwhile, the unexpected reappearance of a hated old combat soldier from Korea thrusts Lutie back into that time period and that mentality, and begins to take its toll. This, combined with an unwelcomed population burst on the Island, starts to wear on his normally imperterbable psyche. Angela observes the changes in her husband, which is never more noticable than the night he attacks and beats up a crowd of rowdy teenagers breaking glass and scattering trash on his favorite beach. The real trouble will not begin until he discovers his loathsome old comrade, frozen and dead in the house of a friend, closed for the winter. A vision of a chainsaw passes through his head, and suddenly he has a plan to stem the tide of growth on his beloved Island. It isn't long before the population is shocked and appalled to learn that a chainsaw wielding maniac is wreaking havoc on the Island, chopping up human bodies and displaying their parts around the various towns. While the rest of the community is in a panic Lutie grows increasingly agitated at what he has started, and when the investigation reveals the source of the bodies and the fear is assuaged, he decides to sink his remaining parts in the sea and get his life back to normal. It appears that he is in the clear, but is he ? This book is skillfully crafted, highly suspenseful and cleverly written, with understatement that only serves to reinforce the plotline. It presents the the troubling idea that people are not always what they appear, and it is a testatment to the detrimental psychological effects of being in a brutal war zone. Given the high number of veterans experiencing this trauma in our current wars, the book has a high contemporary relevance. My wife, our two children and I lived on the Island for over twenty years, and I have tried to distill the charm and grace, as well as the gritty underside, of this beloved piece of paradise.
