Virginia A. Simpson, PhD, FT is a bereavement care specialist and the Executive Counseling Director for hundreds of funeral homes throughout the United States and Canada. She is the founder of The Mourning Star Center for grieving children and their families, which she ran from 1995 to 2005. Simpson has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. She holds a Fellowship in Thanatology from the Association of Death Education & Counseling (ADEC), and has been honored for her work by the cities of Indian Wells, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, and Rancho Mirage. She lives in El Dorado Hills, California with her husband, Bob, and golden retriever, Shelby.

In 1950s New England, being a marriageable young lady means following a certain set of rules. Nineteen-year-old Sabina knows them all too well, thanks to her imposing aunt Poppy, who has already decided how Sabina will spend the season at their summer home in Edgartown, where she’ll go to college in the fall, and the type of young man she’ll eventually marry. But Sabina has other ideas. And the island, it seems, does too.

Sabina is about to meet the Vineyard’s most notorious bachelor: charter pilot Colin Hatch. With a cloudy history, a questionable income, and a reputation for charming every available girl at the yacht club, Colin isn’t exactly the traditional match her aunt had in mind. When Sabina takes a chance on him anyway, a complex love triangle emerges, setting Sabina’s summer on an entirely different path—not just for this vacation season, but maybe for the rest of her life.

A coming-of-age story woven into a small coastal town’s various dramas, Ways of Virtue is Dirty Dancing meets Jane Austen—complete with a beautiful seaside setting, a high-society wedding in the making, a host of scheming, jealous neighbors, and a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane that’s barreling toward them all.