Swan Song

Elin Hilderbrand is a well-known author in the “beach read” genre—though she has pushed back against this potentially diminishing label—with a large fanbase and more than 20 million books sold worldwide (“Elin Hilderbrand Explains Why She’s Retiring from Writing Summer Beach Reads | CBC Arts.” CBCnews, 2024). Hilderbrand’s career as a published author began during her undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University: Her first short story, “Misdirection,” was published in Seventeen Magazine during her senior year. In 1994, Hilderbrand moved to Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, where she has lived ever since. In 1998, she attended the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop, earning her master of fine arts. While Hilderbrand’s debut novel, The Beach Club, came out in the summer of 2000, she truly grew in popularity following the publication of her sixth novel, Barefoot, in 2007.

All of Hilderbrand’s books, beginning with The Beach Club and including Swan Song, are set in the summer on Nantucket, a popular summer destination for tourists. This is a conscious choice, inspired by Hilderbrand’s own summers on the beach in Cape Cod, which came to an end after her father’s death when she was 16—she made a promise to herself that she would always have a “real summer” for the rest of her life (Hilderbrand, Elin.