Wish You Were Here: The Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk

David Rowell is an editor with The Washington Post. His first novel, The Train of Small Mercies, is just out in paperback.

When I was growing up in North Carolina, my family went to the same beach every year; it had the sand, the water and pretty much nothing else. Mostly that was OK, but the idea of a boardwalk, which I caught glimpses of on TV or in movies, seemed wondrous to me — like a carnival rolled out from a wooden carpet.

So when my wife and sons and I discovered the boardwalk in Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach some years ago, I felt like I was stepping back into a childhood dream.