By By Dane Roberts Wans On Bookreview
For the main character of “The Last Beach Bungalow” it all began with her five year check up for breast cancer. She is cancer free. She should have been happy. She should have been able to go on with her life. “What I forgot was how to celebrate that I’m alive,” was how she put it.
This story is told in the first person. You are seeing things through the eyes of April Newton. She has a husband and a child. Her husband is building her a new house as a celebration of being cancer free for five years. But she doesn’t think herself worthy of good things. When going out to buy new lingerie she has misgivings.
Then she sees a beach bungalow that she falls in love with. When she finds an ad that says “The owner of this 1928 original bungalow is seeking a buyer with heart. What would you give — besides money — to live here? Bring your offers, your stories, and a promise to preserve and protect. Winner will pay $300,000.”
She loses all perspective. Her husband is building her a dream house, but it has memories. “The ghost of the woman I wanted to be was just inside that door. Her spirit was there, enjoying the view. Her husband’s spirit was there, too — the spirit of the man who’d designed and built this house for a wife he hoped wouldn’t die.”
The bungalow becomes a character in this story. It is owned by an old lady, Peg Torrey, who still lives in it after her husband passed away. It also has memories for her. How this bungalow affects April’s home life and the life of the people she loves forms the basis of the story.
“’I had a mastectomy,’ I said, as if these four words were enough to explain why I wasn’t a candidate for expensive lingerie.” — What does it take to be a survivor? What would you have to give up to be one?
After the bungalow is sold and the ground is cleared for a new beginning, Peg philosophically concludes, “You know what upset me the most? It wasn’t so much what they did as it was the fact that I judged them so wrong … You’d think after seventy-eight years of life, I’d be able to accurately judge another human being.”
She had been living with a ghost also. She tells of her husband’s last Thanksgiving. He had stopped eating altogether.
“How long do you think it will take,” I asked.
“A week, maybe ten days,” he said.” “I wish I could come with you,” I whispered.
“And do you know what he said to me? “You know I’ll be waiting for you.”
“He told me he would be waiting for me.,” Peg said, “but selling the house taught me it was a different kind of waiting altogether. He’s not waiting for me to die. He’s waiting for me to finish living.”
Dane Robert Swanson lives and writes in Santa Monica. Drop him a line at
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 11, 2008. Read the original PDF.