Dark Harbor: Building House and Home on an Enchanted Island

When Ved Mehta was invited to Islesboro, a thirteen-mile-long island off the coast of Maine, he could not have imagined the far-reaching consequences of his visit. Seduced by the dream of setting roots in the New World, Mehta finds himself buying a fifteen-acre parcel of land in the rugged terrain of Dark Harbor. To build his house, he hires the architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, famous for designing, among other things, the IBM Building in New York. With echoes of Ibsen’s Master-builder, Mehta details the folly of a blind man constructing a house on an island far removed from that other island, Manhattan, where he lives. Underlying this narrative is a richly allegorical tale about Mehta’s own struggles as a writer and as a man. In the middle of it all, he falls in love with a much younger woman, whom he ultimately marries.