Rockport is the Massachusetts seaside town where Saul Burnstein withdraws from public life, makes a home and a business with Sarah, and discovers that even a chosen refuge cannot seal off the past. Its harbor-town calm gives him room to begin again; its Bearskin Neck inn later becomes the setting where news of Franco’s death brings his lost family back into view.

Setting and Arrival

The decisive turn toward Rockport follows Meg’s departure, which ends Saul’s life as an undercover agent. With nothing left to do in Washington, and his wife Gloria and their children away in Italy with his father-in-law, Senator William Mattioli, he accepts an invitation from Michael Morrison. Morrison is a younger Rhode Island congressman whose family has long spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard. Saul hopes the island will let him rest, but it does not.

His route to Rockport is accidental. He is drawn to the town’s postcard prettiness and maritime quiet, but also to the force of the sea surrounding it. The contrast matters: Rockport appears peaceful, yet its landscape is shaped by an element too powerful to be made picturesque. A small two-storey building on Bearskin Neck seems to contain that same combination in miniature. Its upper-floor windows command views that make Saul feel the ocean has spoken to him; he takes the view as a promise that he has found somewhere to spend the rest of his life.

The property is within reach by Washington standards. Saul does not bargain over the price. He asks where he can stay for a night, remains for three, and on the fourth day pays a deposit before leaving for Boston. The building is not simply a place to sleep: the second floor is a two-bedroom apartment, while the ground floor is a shop. When he learns the entire property is for sale, Saul’s attention shifts from the private rooms above to the possibility of what the street-level space might become.

Leaving Washington, Making a Home

Before settling in Rockport, Saul returns to Washington to collect what he wants and write a long letter to his children. He tells them how much he loves them, where he will live, and that they will always be welcome to visit. He knows they will not return from Europe until September, by which time he will be gone. The letter makes his departure a separation, but not a renunciation of fatherhood: he leaves a door open even as he closes the doors connecting him to his former life.

For a couple of weeks, he stays in the apartment he had rented for encounters with his secretary, Abby. She receives the news of his departure with controlled neutrality, says briefly that she will miss him, and agrees to one final request concerning the purchase of the Rockport house. She even asks whether she might visit him there, though both understand she will not. His resignation is accepted with similar good humor. The departure therefore ends more than an occupation: it draws a boundary around the relationships and habits of his Washington existence.

In Rockport, Saul spends the first months repairing the building and finds that manual work suits him. While painting the façade pale yellow, he meets Sarah, who asks to speak with him. She has worked for nearly ten years at a small café beside a service station that is about to close, and wants to know whether she can rent the shop under his home. They quickly reach an arrangement: Saul will charge no rent and take responsibility for maintenance, in exchange for half the profits. The negotiated partnership turns the empty ground floor into the basis of a shared local life.

The Bearskin Inn

The Bearskin Inn opens in the summer of 1951. It is not immediately a prosperous venture; the business does not become especially successful until the middle of the following decade, when holidaymakers and tourists from across the country make Rockport’s name familiar. Sarah, however, remains satisfied with their agreement. The inn’s importance to Saul is not measured by its early earnings. It gives the building a daily purpose and gives him work and company without returning him to the political life he has left.

The arrangement also changes how Saul spends his days. With the inn below and his home above, he can fish, read, sail, and take up other pursuits that help him forget that he once lived otherwise. The vertical arrangement holds his new life together: domestic space upstairs, a business shared with Sarah downstairs, and the sea beyond the windows. Rockport offers not a dramatic reinvention but a steady practice of living differently.

The town remains a refuge for decades, but not an escape from history. On the night of November 20, 1975, televised images suddenly return Saul to the past. He hurries downstairs to call for Sarah, only to find the inn full of customers whose noise prevents his voice from reaching her. The room’s ordinary bustle briefly obstructs the news he needs to share; when Sarah rings her bell to get her patrons’ attention, Saul looks around and registers what the moment has awakened.

Memory and Franco’s Death

In the Bearskin Inn, Saul imagines that the restaurant also contains a large Jewish family seated at a table in a house in Korzcyna, in Polish Galicia. He sees Sara Burnstein among her older daughters, Agar and Rebeca; David standing beside them; the youngest daughter, Linka, on the other side; Efraim and Elyahu with them; and many small children, some held in their mothers’ arms. He also sees young brothers- and sisters-in-law whose names he has partly forgotten. The remembered family looks at him and smiles. Rockport’s present-day gathering does not erase that lost household; it gives Saul a place from which to see it again.

Asked by Sarah what is happening, Saul finally announces that Franco has died and proposes that they celebrate. He lifts the hatch separating the bar from the rest of the inn and helps Sarah serve drinks and set bottles on the counter. She smiles and joins in, although she does not yet understand why the death matters. She plans to stay upstairs that night so she can learn what has happened. A young customer, meanwhile, asks his friend who the dead man was as they collect beers for their group at the back of the room. The exchange places Saul’s urgent historical recognition beside the younger patrons’ lack of context.

Rockport’s meaning thus changes without ceasing to be the place Saul chose. The Atlantic view first offers the promise of a life beyond his former work; the house becomes a home, and its shop a partnership that sustains everyday pleasures. But the inn is also where the past returns with unmistakable force. Franco’s death connects Saul’s secluded years to the history that shaped him, while the vision of his family makes celebration inseparable from remembrance. The refuge does not cure loss or keep politics outside its doors; it allows Saul, at last, to meet public news with the private memory it carries.