Author Nancy Wood (1928–2025) immediately reveals the key catalyst in her story “The Brass Ring: A Novel About Friendship” in the opening lines: “I didn’t set out to capture my oldest friend’s fiancé. It wasn’t like that. It didn’t come all at once like a bee sting, that spellbound longing for him, but I was 18, brimming with love and romance, and I was an easy mark.
“Blame it on the goings-on during that Vineyard summer that convinced me he rightfully belonged with me … I was convinced that if he met up with the force of my desire, a happy ending would surely follow.”
This is the adult voice of Joanie, one of the three friends, along with BT and Edie, the friends referred to in the novel’s subtitle.
Leo is the boy in question, whom Joanie stole from BT. Now in their late 70s, gathered at Leo’s funeral, Joanie tells us she believes BT is still unaware of the deception that took place in their teenage years. BT assures Joanie, “Honestly, please believe me when I say I’m glad he ended up with someone I care about like you … I never resented him marrying you. I know he had every reason in the world to break up with me.” In response, Joanie says to us, “Now would be the time to tell her that if Edie and I hadn’t interfered, she would most likely be the one married to Leo all this time.”
Having set the stage, Wood then thrusts us back to that fateful summer in 1946, when, fresh out of high school, the three girls travel to the Vineyard to be waitresses at the Tashmoo Inn. The girls quickly pair off with three boys. The problem arises when BT, who’d been all but engaged to her sweetheart Leo, now a soldier in Europe, falls head over heels in love with her summer fling. Unable to answer Leo’s continual love letters, BT has Joanie write to him in her name. And Joanie, secretly in love with Leo, is happy to do so, dreaming that his words of love to BT are for her.
To tell more would be to give away the story. But the rest of the novel alternates among the three women, and how that early deception, leading to Leo becoming Joanie’s husband, plays out right up to Leo’s funeral and beyond.
Wood situates some segments of “The Brass Ring” on the Vineyard. For those familiar with the Island, there is an authenticity to these chapters, informed by Wood’s decades of living here. Although her novel is a work of fiction, Wood infuses aspects of her real life into the story. In a recent interview, her daughter, Jennifer Bates, explains, “The story is half autobiographical and half made up. Like the three friends, Mom came to the Vineyard right after high school in 1946. She worked at the Tashmoo Inn in Vineyard Haven before it burned down. There’s a lot in the book about the way [the Island] was back then, like hitchhiking everywhere.”
Wood later summered on the Island off and on. She also lived here full-time twice, once starting in 1966 for six years, and again after she retired in 2012, until she passed away in 2025.
Wood wrote a few books over the years, and occasionally penned pieces for the Gazette. “She always had something going,” Bates recalls. “She also always had a picture of the Tashmoo Inn in her bedroom. She got the Vineyard bug in 1946, and never lost it. She wanted to get that down in writing, because that summer really affected her whole life. She met people who became friends for her whole life. From 18 years old until the day she died at 97, the Vineyard was always in her life.”
During her later years, Wood became involved in author Cynthia Riggs’ Wednesday Writers Group. “They vetted ‘The Brass Ring’ and asked her questions,” Bates says. Connie Berry, one of the members, and a close friend of Wood’s, adds, “We all loved listening to Nancy’s progress as she wrote the book. Her memories of the Island were so vast — she had a connection here since she was a teenager, and then lived here full-time during different phases of her life, and she lived a very long and interesting life.”
“When Mom received a prognosis of heart failure, her greatest desire was to finish the book and hold a copy in her hands,” says Bates, who worked tirelessly to help her accomplish this. “I wanted to get it out there for people who are interested in the old Vineyard stories.”
In fact, the Vineyard references start with the book’s title. It refers to the coveted brass ring riders attempt to grab from the rapid-fire dispenser when passing by on their trusty steeds on the Flying Horses Carousel in Oak Bluffs.
“The Brass Ring” is fiction, although Bates says, “Each of the main characters has pieces of my mother in them at various phases of her life. But only the family knows for sure which things are real or not. But in the end, it’s a story of forgiveness and friendship.”
“The Brass Ring” by Nancy Wood. Available at Edgartown Books, Bunch of Grapes, and Cronig’s Market.