Journey to Safe Harbor

In 1975, author Elizabeth Jacks Scott was a young matron from New York with a husband and two small children and the new owner of an old sail loft building in Tenants Harbor, Maine. It had been in her family for years, and it was filled with memories and history, six generations of them, a jumble of contradictory, conflictual, tragic, and happy memories. JOURNEY TO SAFE HARBOR covers three generations of a family where the personal and emotional sacrifices made in the name of mission, commitment and duty, aiming ‘to do good in the world’, ended with unintended tragic consequences for their children. It is about a professional family, educated, religious and idealistic, but did they understand love? Scott shares a narrative of her collected records, her experiences, and her journey. It narrates the saga of the origins of her family’s trauma in Tenants Harbor, how it played out in India and on the south side of Chicago. She toggles between Tenants Harbor, India and Chicago to show the interweaving of three eras and how they resulted in the family’s fragmentation and great tragedy. The memoir chronicles the journey of healing through the ups and down of life resulting in Scott, family and the community reconnecting. Elizabeth Jacks Scott taught American and World history for five years, practiced psychotherapy and family therapy in New York City for more than two decades, ran grief groups at St. Bartholomew’s Church for seven years, and cofounded Hudson Valley Weddings at The Hill. She is an ordained interfaith minister and a clinical social worker. Scott lives with her husband in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and the coast of Maine. Combined with her husband, they have four children and eight grandchildren.