This sneaky, cheeky bit of artistry looks innocent enough at first glance. Fan through the pages and you're treated to beautiful color paintings of summer scenes in thirteen Cape Cod communities. The title and the captions apparently refer to tourists, beginning with cars streaming over the Bourne Bridge: “They arrive every summer, passing over the bridges in droves.”

The next image, in Sandwich, where a girl admires ducks on a millpond, continues the theme: “Coming from far away, they feel as though they've landed in a different world.”
So far, so simple: Penta is describing summer people, right? Well, yes and no. By the third or fourth spread, quite another “invasion” comes into focus. It takes a few pages for most readers to realize that hovering overhead in each image are flying saucers, UFOs, visitors from another world who, just like tourists, “pass over the bridge in droves” and “will go any distance for ice cream.” By the time Penta's artistic journey reaches Provincetown, the sky is swarming with saucers, but then, “What might seem alien elsewhere is accepted here.”

This is a Cape Cod you've never quite seen before, familiar yet otherworldly, as ironic as it is beautiful.

(Courtesy of Commonwealth Editions)