Allison Bass-Riccio

Hazel Hawthorne’s Provincetown Novel Salt House Re-Released

by Steve Desroches

The voices from long ago wind through the dunes and streets of Provincetown in a whisper. There are stories everywhere. A painting, a sculpture, a photograph, a historical artifact, or a long out-of-print book can open up a whole new world and understanding of the many facets of Provincetown’s deep history and the fascinating people who have lived here over time and bring them to life again while also changing the life of the person willing to listen. Such was the case with Allison Bass-Riccio, an English teacher and writing center coordinator at Cheshire Academy, a boarding school outside of New Haven, Connecticut. She’d always loved visiting Provincetown feeling fully herself and at home here. So in 2020, when the pandemic changed every aspect of life, she and her partner bought a small cottage in the far East End. Wanting to learn more about Provincetown she began looking for books on local history and life, and that Christmas her boyfriend bought her The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod by Cynthia Huntington published in 1999. In it, Huntington describes living in Euphoria, a dune shack on the Back Shore, one that,along with Thalassa, was once owned by writer Hazel Hawthorne. The descriptions of this bohemian woman who was a major player in the Provincetown Art Colony in the 20th century, living on her own terms, in the dunes, in the 1930s, captured every aspect of Bass-Riccio’s imagination.

“I was just mesmerized by this story about this woman in the 1930s who wanted to live life her own way,” says Bass-Riccio. “It’s still hard to do that now, never mind back then.”

Bass-Riccio began to furiously research, digging up anything she could find about Hawthorne. But there wasn’t very much, just one article in Smithsonian magazine and some stories in various Cape Cod publications. Then she discovered the podcast Finding Hazel Hawthorne, produced in Helsinki, Finland, by Inka Leisma and Essi Isomäki. Leisma was in Berlin in 2014 and took in a major exhibition of the famed American photographer Walker Evans, which featured a portrait taken of Hawthorne, most likely in Provincetown. She became transfixed and like Bass-Riccio began tirelessly researching Hawthorne’s life dismayed her legacy seemed to be vanishing. Leisma made several trips to Provincetown, visiting the dune shack where Hawthorne lived, meeting people who knew her, and going to the Provincetown Public Library to the Cape Cod History room to read Hawthorne’s two out-of-print books, 1938’s Three Women and Hawthorne’s landmark Salt House, originally published in 1934. 

With a renewed sense of energy and focus after listening to the podcast, Bass-Riccio applied for and received a writer’s residency to stay in a dune shack in a program administered by the Provincetown Community Compact in cooperation with the Cape Cod National Seashore. Way out of her comfort zone in a shack without running water and electricity, nervous about snakes and coyotes, Bass-Riccio eventually settled in dune life, reading Salt House, which, while a novel, is very much autobiographical, recounting the wild, libertine culture of the Back Shore of Provincetown. 

“The experience completely changed my life,” says Bass-Riccio. “I was writing an article about staying in the shack and I’d read the guest book to see what others experienced. I saw one entry that said, ‘I spent so many summers in my grandmother’s dune shack Euphoria.’ ‘Oh my God’, I thought. That must be Hazel’s grand-daughter!”

Indeed, it was her grand-daughter, Susan Pomerantz. After reaching out it did not take long for the two to become friends, and Pomerantz entrusted Hawthorne’s archives to Bass-Riccio, where they are cataloged and preserved at Cheshire Academy, and the core of The Hazel Project, in which Bass-Riccio’s students use the materials to learn about history, literature, Cape Cod, and of course the work of Hawthorne. 

There would be more serendipity when Pomerantz connected Bass-Riccio with Livia Tenzer, a board member of the Provincetown Arts Press who herself was obsessed with Hawthorne and in particular Salt House. The two agreed to work together to re-publish the book after being out of print for decades. It’s a touch ironic that the only copy remaining in Provincetown that led to it being re-printed should come from the Provincetown Public Library, as the book was considered so scandalous for its progressive message and wild, bohemian culture, the librarian back in the 1930s would hide Salt House, and written reviews called the book “inappropriate” and “immoral.” Nothing makes people want to read something more than criticisms like that. 

Tenzer, Bass-Riccio, and her students succeeded, and Salt House was republished this past August with Bass-Riccio writing the afterword, selling out the first run in a matter of weeks, with a second printing now available. Bass-Riccio is back in Provincetown after participating in Naming Sally, a storytelling event to bring attention to the voices of Provincetown women throughout history, and will return in October for an event about Salt House at the Provincetown Public Library with the students currently working on The Hazel Project.

“Even though it was written in 1934 it is still so relevant,” says Bass-Riccio. “There’s so much interest in Salt House and in Hawthorne. It’s been such an amazing experience.”

Hazel Hawthorne’s Salt House is available from the Provincetown Arts Press online at provincetownarts.org and at local booksellers. Allison Bass-Riccio and her students will make a presentation about The Hazel Project on Tuesday, October 21 at 5:30 p.m. at the Provincetown Public Library, 356 Commercial St. For more information call 508.487.7094 or visit provincetownlibrary.org.