Elin Hilderbrand Says Goodbye to Nantucket Summers

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For decades, Elin Hilderbrand’s name has been synonymous with summer reading. Her novels set among the misbehaving moneyed class on Nantucket Island juggle romance and crime and a sun-kissed beach vibe that her fans soak up like coconut oil, some of them so fervently that they even make pilgrimages to Nantucket in the off-season.

Now, Hilderbrand is giving all of that up. She has announced that her new novel, the appropriately titled “Swan Song,” will be the last of her Nantucket summer novels, letting her catch her breath and pursue other plans. This week on the podcast, she discusses that decision and tells Gilbert Cruz how she feels about her impending semiretirement.

“Oh, I’m ecstatic. I couldn’t be any happier,” she says. “The business of publishing, the way I’ve been doing it, Gilbert, has put me constantly on deadline for the last 24 years. So there has never been a time when I have not been either starting a book, in the middle of a book, finishing a book, and then, really the part that I like the least, which is marketing the book. … I’d really rather be sitting home writing, or even better still, reading. So in my retirement I hope to be doing a lot more quiet work on projects that do not have a deadline.”

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