— The SandPaper, Long Beach Island.

Perhaps it's all about simplicity, serenity, and appreciation. Like a treasure in the sand, How to Live at the Beach lets us discover - and rediscover - that allure.

EXCERPT

“Simplicity is an unbuttoning of what we’ve learned to wear as a self—a looser fit, a softer fabric. It’s like a step we’ve forgetten how to dance, a native language we’ve forgotten how to speak in a rushy complex world. We know that simplicity is within us and within our grasp.”

We want to elongate the days, distill the memories, make them last. At the same time, we know that the beauty is in the evanescence ...
Every wave comes in, then retreats. Every day promises, then turns its back and slips away. Every joy has a little tease in it, a give and a take, and leaves a wake of longing.”

Sandy Gingras is a writer, poet, and artist with her own design company who has turned her love of prose and her love of the seashore into her life’s work. Ms. Gingras is a longtime resident of Long Beach Island, on the New Jersey coast, where she is actively involved in efforts to preserve open space and wetlands. She lives there with her son and two cats. She has a Masters in English from Duke University, and has been involved in poetry and writing workshops. She has traveled extensively along East Coast beaches and islands and lived for a year in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.