Cape Cod [Paperback]

William Martin (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 864 pages
• Publisher: Warner; Reprint edition (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446692603
• ISBN-13: 978-0446692601
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,520,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

In his boyhood, William Martin loved what he later called "big stories on broad canvases." He read the novels of C.S. Forester, Dickens, and western author Will Henry. He sat transfixed by the big movies of the early sixties. So after college he went to Hollywood to try his hand at screenwritng but quickly found that his instincts were better suited to novels. His first, "Back Bay," introduced treasure hunter Peter Fallon in a new kind of adventure that joined the contemporary mystery-thriller to the historical novel. In his nine novels (including four best selling Peter Fallon adventures), Martin has tracked national treasures across the landscape of the American imagination, chronicled the lives of the great and the anonymous in American history, and brought to life legendary American locations, from "Cape Cod" to "Annapolis" to the "City of Dreams." He has also written an award-winning PBS documentary on the life of Washington and a cult-classic horror movie, has contributed book reviews to the Boston Globe, and has taught writing across the country, from the Harvard Extension School to the famous Maui Writers Conference. He lives near Boston with his wife and has three grown children. His work has established him as a "storyteller whose smoothness matches his ambition."(Publisher's Weekly) And he was the recipient of the 2005 New England Book Award, given to "an author whose body of work stands as a significant contribution to the culture of the region."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America's beginnings, September 10, 1999

By 

Charles Andrews (Fort Worth, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cape Cod (Mass Market Paperback)

Martin brings the plight of the Pilgrims to life. He also manages also to so us once again that these were people and not icons. While fiction, it is easy to visualize the petty argumnets and personality struggles within this group that most of us assume was a cohesive unit with a united purpose. Using his now familiar device of switching back and forth from now and then, Martin paints a living picture of the early history of the Cape. This was the last of Martin's books that I read prior to Citizen Washington. I hesitated because I thought the topic limited but I ended learning and enjoying a compelling history of a special niche in American history.

Martin demonstrates an uncanny ability to tell the great stories (Annapolis - US Navy) a the small (Cape Cod) and make them breathe.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CAPE COD.....It ain't just beaches....., November 2, 2002

By 

Jayhawk (Boston, Ma. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cape Cod (Mass Market Paperback)

At least not in William Martin's novel of the same name. In Martin's CAPE COD there are feuding families, long-held secrets, regional history and, tying it all together, a mystery - as well as those wondrous beaches and that natural essence of 'The Cape' (as we New Englanders know and love it) that he brings to life in this story.
From the first pages of this novel, in which whales inexplicably beach themselves, Native Americans and White men clash, and the Pilgrims, noble, flawed and human as they were, suffer the awful indignities of the relentless voyage to the New World, we're off on a William Martin-style adventure. As is his BACK BAY and ANNAPOLIS, the story unfolds through the eyes of (sometimes warring - always interesting) families, and jumps back and forth in time. This enables us to feel the historical events that are going to impact on the modern-day intrigue. I have always liked this about William Martin's stories. This sense of what it was like 'then,' how people felt, how they acted. We get to enjoy a well written tale and learn a thing or three along the way. Martin's respect for, and love of, history is evident throughout CAPE COD, as it is in ANNAPOLIS, BACK BAY and CITIZEN WASHINGTON. And his reverence for 'The Cape' will be evident to every reader, especially we Cape lovers! For us, that's a bonus. To read CAPE COD is to feel, in those pages, that essence of 'TheCape,'that infuses us as soon as we have crossed the Sagamore and the Bourne bridges....CAPE COD is a wonderful story, a lesson in our history, and the kind of enlightening adventure we have come to expect from William Martin. As usual, he delivers! Read this book...Perhaps sitting in a lounge chair on a sunny summer day at the edge of Old Silver Beach...You'll be glad you did....

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb tale of a region, March 3, 1999

By 

Steve Clark - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cape Cod (Mass Market Paperback)

As a devout reader of Michener, Rutherford and Jakes, William Martin's Cape Cod is just as good as anything written by those authors. I judge historical novels on how well they capture the 'sense of place' of the region they focus on. I have spent summers in Cape Cod when I was very young and am currently delving into the genealogy of New England families, and for me, Cape Cod really captured the historical and present-day feelings of the land and the people extremely well.