Book excerpt: After years of pursuing a denim design career, Maris Carrington never imagined trading her Chicago studio for a New England shingled cottage. But when her life sketch takes an unexpected shape--smudged with a pastel seaside setting, rendered with pencil strokes of her father's estate shading family secrets, and inked with silhouettes of old friends reconnecting on a weathered boardwalk--nothing is what is seems as illusion blends with reality.