“Cape May,” a novel by Chip Creek. Celadon Books, April 2019. $26.99, hardcover. 248 pages.

“Cape May,” a debut novel by Chip Creek, an author with ties to Boston and New England where he went to school and taught, plunges us head-first into the deep end of lust. Readers come up for air on page 243, stricken yet entertained, and a little spent from all the titillation. The truth Creek tells: Lust’s chokehold is merciless, irrational, potentially ruinous. Some readers have learned this truth the hard way but in “Cape May,” it’s other people’s moral failings and obsessions we behold, at times breathlessly. Voyeurs take note: “Cape May” is a fine choice for your first summer read of the season.

The story takes place in the late 1950s in Cape May, New Jersey. Honeymooners Effie and Henry, 18 and 20 respectively, stay in her uncle’s house where they consummate their union in an attic twin bed. Effie has fond memories of Cape May from her family’s summer vacations. But in September, it’s a ghost town. They must rethink plans and expectations. The two longtime school mates must rediscover themselves - as husband and wife - with no people, activities or mindless distractions to take the edge off such undiluted intensity as theirs.

They are young but they do possess a kind of innocent confidence, charm and a spirit of adventure. So when they encounter, just a few blocks away, a threesome devoted to debauchery, they are curious and a little hungry for some of that. Never mind that they are just then discovering their own sexuality and the joys of each other. Creek’s take on the couple’s willingness to explore, even in the midst of their own glorious encounters with each other: “Desire engendered desire.” Really? This idea is one your book group may want to ponder.

Once Henry and Effie meet the expansive and fun-loving, ever ebullient Clara, her wealthy and easy-going friend Max and his beautiful half-sister Alma, they reorient themselves. The five of them sail, eat, drink and party late into the nights. When the two-week honeymoon is supposed to end, the young marrieds decide to stay another week in the house with Clara and friends.

Henry may love and lust for Effie but Alma, Max’s half-sister, is all seductress all the time. She gloms onto Henry - not so others would notice - but he feels her lure as if it were a universe of gravity dragging him out of the range of moral rectitude. He succumbs. And he knows better, of course. Creek makes that point very clear. Henry is guilty. Henry vows renewed allegiance. Henry is sympathetic when Effie gets sick and goes to bed for several days. Instead of sickroom duties, however, he serves Alma. The blame rests with each of them. Even Effie.

Creek approaches the book’s boldest, most consequential scenes slowly. You have to wait for it. We feel the tension, the daring and the recklessness escalate chapter by chapter. Creek is a master of piling on petty details, like all the small talk at a fundraiser, to lead us deeper into the morality void. At one point Henry is blindsided by the repercussions of his actions. “He was empty with shock.” Creek is a creative builder, piling it on - albeit artfully - occasionally unleashing a zinger of a sentence. That, too, keeps us turning pages for more.

There are people like Clara and Henry. Clara tells Henry, “We want everything.” It’s easier to abandon reason when desire floods all the senses, obscuring opposing forces like common sense.

To accept Alma and Henry’s fever dream is to accept that desire engenders desire, as the author seems to posit in his pointed and disruptive tale. We humans deserve sympathy. Global warming is nothing compared to the tempest within.
Rae Padilla Francoeur can be reached at rae@raefrancoeur.com.