Cove Harbor Comeuppance and Sag Harbor, NY

Anna Dunworth
Jan 18
5 min read

Updated: Feb 6

me and friends walking on the jetty, circa 2007

As many of you know, Cove Harbor Comeuppance is a collection of short mysteries set in a fictional version of my hometown, Sag Harbor, NY.

I love Sag Harbor. It is where I grew up, and it will always remain a part of me. I am fully aware that the village has drastically transformed from the little fishing town of my childhood, but it's not (yet) unrecognizable, and I still love it just the same.

Many have asked me about the connections between the mysteries and the real place, so I thought I'd take a few minutes to detail them here. This one is for the curious, especially the locals who are wondering who's who and what's what.

For starters, I need to clarify something super important: Cove Harbor is SET in a fictional Sag Harbor. The only direct connections are in the settings. Meaning, the places are the same, but the people and stories are entirely fictional.

Sag Harbor is a beautiful place - and not in one of those "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" types of ways. It is objectively stunning: a village of historic brick, set against the open horizon of the marina, mere miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

People travel from all over the world to visit our little town, and through Cove Harbor, you can do the same. Some say that when you grow up in a place like this, you often fail to see the beauty as it becomes so normal in your everyday life.

I don't think anyone I grew up with feels that way. It is impossible to overlook the intense awe of a sunset over the ocean, or a sunrise reddening the sky over still waters. We have the opposite problem, in that all natural beauty will forever be compared to our hometown, and as such, we are not easily impressed.

That being said, I could never fully grasp why tourists were willing to sit in so much colossal traffic just to visit. I worked on Main Street for many years and often jokingly wondered what visitors could possibly think was in our town that they were willing to wait hours (not an exaggeration) in bumper-to-bumper traffic just to breach the village lines.

All that aside, the beauty of Sag Harbor, and its deep familiarity to me, is the major connection to the mystery collection. Every street in every story is based on a real one in town. Each bar, restaurant, and location started with something real, though I took quite a bit of creative license with some, rendering them unrecognizable by the end.

If you want a closer look at these connections, grab a bonus edition of Cove Harbor Comeuppance. The bonus edition comes with an author's note and photos taken around town that directly connect to the stories (labeled and everything).

What is entirely fictional? The plots of each story. The crimes. The characters.

Maybe every author says this, but I can honestly say that no character is truly based on anyone I know. Instead, I tried to think of all the people of Sag Harbor, find their overlaps, and then create characters based on whichever trends felt authentic enough to work.

For example, Amy Green (of A Holiday Homicide) manages an art gallery in Cove Harbor. One of my lifelong friends (Megan) manages Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor. Amy is not Megan, but she is a conglomerate of the experiences shared with me by Megan, my many friends who are the children of local artists, the local artists themselves, and the countless openings, benefits, and fundraisers I attended before I moved away in my mid-twenties.

Amy is all that, and more, because I invented her. She is not any one person in particular, and every character in the collection fits a similar mold.

Sag Harbor: Then and Now

It would be an oversight not to mention that Cove Harbor is based on the Sag Harbor where I grew up, as opposed to the village as it is today. I'm a millennial, born in 1991. I lived in Noyac until 2017, when I left to accept a job teaching high school history in the New York City public schools.

I attended elementary, middle, and high school in Sag Harbor. I worked on Main Street for 8 years, first on the sales floor and then managing inventory for a designer clothing boutique. I spent one summer working at a seafood spot and a few years managing an insurance agency one town over. I substitute taught in Pierson and Bridgehampton schools.

I loved Sag Harbor. I captained the field hockey team and performed in the school musicals. I played the flute in the band, marched in parades, and sat on the student council. I walked the streets with my friends (and alone) like we owned everything, and frequented the local establishments just the same - because that's what being a teenager is.

I'm telling you all of this so that you know where Cove Harbor came from - A quieter town, where you got pizza at Conca (or Vincenzos? lol), tacos at Superica, and nobody knew where to find fro-yo. Where seven eleven was open all the time, Java Nation flooded the alley with coffee grinds, and you could almost always find teenagers hanging their legs off the wharf because there were no fences or barriers back then. Bikes hung at the bike shop on Main Street, sodas were a dollar at the Beverage Store, and nobody ever really believed they'd actually fix up the old watch factory. (Go figure.)

I could go on like this forever, but I won't. This was the Sag Harbor of my childhood, and this is the town on which Cove Harbor is based. Today, it looks and feels a little different, but the bones are still there - for now, anyway.

Growing up out East, we always had a summer season. It comes with the territory as part of the Hamptons. Memorial Day kicked off the chaos, Fourth of July accelerated it, and August was just busy, busy, busy. Nowadays, though, the summer crowds make those of my youth feel minuscule.

It's a mixed bag, the summer tourism. On the one hand, the visitors support local businesses and keep the town moving along, modernizing in some good and necessary ways. They (mostly) spend a lot of money, and that helps pay the bills.

On the other hand, the unsustainable crowds (and those who pander to them) over-commercialize our beloved spaces, force out generational locals (& workers), and contribute to the decline of our communities - often replacing historic (once affordable) homes and businesses with whatever tourists might prefer for the weekend or two they'll spend in the area each year.

If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to scream that our communities are not a commodity, I still wouldn't be able to afford one of those out-of-place homes they keep throwing up on former woodlands. Maybe I could cover preschool payments with the difference, though.

These are the feelings behind the collection. I hope Cove Harbor Comeuppance appeals to locals and nonlocals alike, but I can't help that I am local, through and through - and the flavor of that colors every story.

I hope you feel the love for my hometown when you read it, but also that you pick up on some of the larger issues settling beneath the surface. Our roots grow deep out here, and for better or worse, Sag Harbor is a part of me (and my writing).

Thanks for reading. Drop a comment to join the conversation.

Let’s connect: Website // Instagram // Weekly Newsletter // Medium