Lifelong Marbleheader Laurie Fullerton has written about sailing for 25 years, including here at the Marblehead Current.
Now, she’s out with her first novel, and its fictional location may seem familiar.
“I probably made up most of the people, but they’re kind of based on people who you might meet in a small New England town,” she said.
Some of the character names will also ring a bell. One example?
“There’s Owen Dodd, who is named after Benjamin Dodd who was from Marblehead,” Fullerton explained. “I lived in the Benjamin Dodd House at 24 Merritt St. He was lost in the Great Gale of the 1840s.”
Fullerton’s novel, “Side Launch” is about a journalist who moves to the fictional Maine town of Clydebank to write for the local paper. She stumbles on a ramshackle shipyard nearby and meets a local, who is trying to build a 70-foot wooden schooner using old shipbuilding techniques and traditions that few remember.
“The town is being threatened by a developer who wants to turn the shipyard into a marina,” Fullerton says. “There’s a warrant article coming up at the Town Meeting.”
In the story, which is loosely based on Fullerton’s own experiences, the journalist reports on the struggling shipyard, and the locals get involved to try and save it. A romance blooms.
“She tries to learn some of the shipbuilding skills,” Fullerton said. “If you go to any shipyard, it really still is a man’s world. She tries to forge her way and fumbles and stumbles her way through. She learns a lot along the way.”
Fullerton started working on the book in 2018 but finally self-published it this June.
New York Times bestselling author Ann Leary, who also is from Marblehead, wrote a glowing endorsement.
“From the first pages of this wonderful novel, I was thoroughly transported to the Maine coast and could almost smell salt in the air,” Leary wrote. “This story is about love, family tradition and the quiet nobility of a certain type of New Englander, who, like a hand-hewn ship’s hull, is rare but not extinct.”
Asked about the meaning of the title, “Side Launch,” Fullerton explained, “It’s a technique of launching a schooner. They build a 70-foot schooner in the front yard, but they don’t have the money to launch it with major machinery. They have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
She added, “A lot of the characters in the story are also taking detours.”
Fullerton has written about sailing for the last quarter-century, including at the old Marblehead Reporter. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times., Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald and national magazines SAIL, Sailing World and SAILING.
Fullerton says she’s received lots of positive feedback since the book was published.
“There are people out there who still love to read, and I’m grateful for them,” she said, adding she may write a second book.
“Side Launch” is available HERE.
Editor Leigh Blander is an experienced TV, radio and print journalist.
