My Kind of People

Ten-year-old Sky was abandoned and then adopted as an infant. Later, a tragic car accident took both her adoptive parents. Now she’s the ward of Leo, her father’s best friend, who’d never planned on having children and whose husband, Xavier, is ready to call it quits if Leo doesn’t find someone else to care for Sky. But Leo has no intention of giving her up and instead settles into a new life on Ichabod Island, the remote New England island where he grew up.

Most people on Ichabod are supportive of Leo, but as one of the only Black people on the island, he’s always felt like an outsider. Agnes, snobby and nosy, believes she knows what’s best for Sky, and she arranges for Sky’s grandmother to move to Ichabod, setting up a clash that will test loyalties between even the closest of friends. Meanwhile, teacher Maggie grows closer to Sky and Leo and to her neighbor Joe as she wrestles with marital problems, while an unnamed woman skulks in the background, mysteriously linked to them all.

Duffy nicely weaves this large cast of characters into a community that is both flawed and supportive. The people of Ichabod experience small troubles and big troubles, regrets and triumphs, and their distance from the rest of the world in no way shields them from the social issues of the day. There are a lot of balls in the air here plot-wise, a lot of relationships to break and mend, but readers who enjoy a deep-dive into multiple storylines will find a good summer read with many threads tied up in a satisfying, if perhaps too tidy, conclusion.