Hilderbrand fans flock to Nantucket
Readers spend time with favorite author on cold island and build own community
On a Friday night in January, Elin Hilderbrand strode into the ballroom of the Nantucket Hotel.
It was trivia night at the ninth Elin Hilderbrand Bucket List Weekend in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and 131 readers from all over the country — mostly white middle-aged women — welcomed the author with a frenzied fervor their daughters would save for Taylor Swift.
Regulars at book events know how rare it is for writers to receive a hero’s welcome; more often than not, they’re greeted by rows of empty chairs. The fact that Hilderbrand’s fans traveled to an island 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, during the coldest month of the year, to see the places she writes about is remarkable unto itself. Factor in repeat participants, a 300-person waiting list for each of the last two Bucket List Weekends (Hilderbrand says she plans to retire in 2024) and the expense ($695 for an event package, plus transportation and lodging) and you have to wonder: What is Hilderbrand’s special sauce? And what does a Hilderbabe, as fans are known, get out of her time on Nantucket?
“The greatest thing about this weekend is, hour one maybe it’s about me, but it goes way beyond me. It’s about the island and the group of women,” said Hilderbrand. “They come to shop. They come to drink. They’re away from their kids and their husband and their job, and they’re with their girlfriends, and it’s full on fun having. They have joie de vivre. That is typical of my readers.”
For the uninitiated, Hilderbrand is not the author of “Seabiscuit” (that’s Laura Hillenbrand) or the ex-wife of Tiger Woods (Elin Nordegren). This author, 53, has written 29 intelligently uncomplicated beach reads in 23 years, including her latest bestsellers, “The Hotel Nantucket” and “Endless Summer.” She has sold more than 20 million books worldwide. Most of her novels are set on Nantucket, and all of them include flawed people with seemingly unsolvable problems that somehow get solved, plus detailed descriptions of a breezy, sun-kissed, born-into-it life: the beaches, the meals, the houses, the views from the houses. Hilderbrand’s novels are temporary passports to a world where you won’t get queasy on a sailboat or have to Google a recipe for cocktail sauce. When you’re there, you’ll know how to tie a sarong.
The first Bucket List Weekend was the brainchild of Mark and Gwenn Snider, owners of the Nantucket Hotel, who befriended Hilderbrand as she sat by their pool, writing drafts of books in longhand on legal pads. “Watching her discipline and focus is remarkable,”
Mark Snider said.
Knowing that she had legions of fans, the pair asked Hilderbrand if she’d host a winter weekend for readers at the hotel. She figured 40 people would show up; instead, rooms sold out in four days and about 125 people descended on the island in 2015.
The next January, there were repeat customers. “That I could not comprehend,” Hilderbrand said. “I thought to myself, you’ve already met me, and I’ve signed your book, and you’ve seen all the Elin sights.”
Eventually Hilderbrand realized that her readers were building a community of their own.
Over the years, the Bucket List experience has evolved. Hilderbrand used to give a bus tour of landmarks from her novels; now there are five 90-minute excursions over the weekend, narrated by professionals. Last year’s festivities were dampened
by pandemic restrictions. Visitors have been stranded by storms, and once, a guest realized that she had befriended the woman who’d had a marriage-ending affair with her husband.
“That was quite an Elin Hilderbrand novel experience,” Snider recalled.
At trivia night, a hush fell over the room when Hilderbrand grabbed the microphone and posed 39 rapid-fire questions about her characters’ jobs, favorite sports teams, food preferences and significant others’ children’s names.
The winner was Lexy Enterline, 41, a coach specializing in financial and life change from Las Vegas. Her name will now appear in Hilderbrand’s final Nantucket novel, “Swan Song.”
“I reread all the books, and I kept a notebook where I kept track of little facts,” Enterline said.
Long a fan of Hilderbrand’s, Enterline’s connection to the author deepened in 2022. Her mother died
of colon cancer in June; after that, she said, “Every time I would read I would just cry.” Four months later, when her father was hospitalized with end stage liver disease, Enterline kept vigil by his bedside, plowing through four Hilderbrand novels in 24 hours. “They were comforting to me. It was like revisiting an old friend, knowing what to expect,” she explained. “Elin brought me back to reading.”
Jessica Jackson, 46, a retired human resources professional from Phoenix who was attending her eighth Bucket List Weekend, addressed the elephant in the ballroom: the homogeneity of the crowd.
She said, “I’m Hispanic. My husband was like, ‘You know you’re brown, right? This is going to be a whole East Coast different thing, right? You’re used to a little bit more diversity.’ ”
She went on, “It was a little shocking because the first year was very vanilla.
But Elin is so inclusive with everybody, I didn’t feel it. Nobody treated me differently or anything. Over the years, it’s gotten better. I think because she’s gotten humongous on the West Coast, she’s getting more diversity there.”
Whether Hilderbabes had arrived together or just met, it seemed that no subject was off limits during a 3 ½-hour, winefueled expedition called the sip ‘n shop as groups of women hit Nantucket Looms, Jessica Hicks Jewelry and other stores featured in Hilderbrand’s novels.
“It’s almost like when people go away for a wellness weekend, and they have these epiphanies and this relighting of who you are,” Jackson said. “We’re connected with Elin because of her books, but she’s also vulnerable and makes it OK to talk about divorce, cancer and your crazy kid that had a party when you were away. There’s no judgment.”