REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • A novel of family secrets ghosts and homecoming set on the seaside
cliffs of Maine by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers “A
stunning achievement and J. Courtney Sullivan’s best book yet. Sullivan weaves a narrative
that’s fascinating and thought-provoking. I literally could not put this book down.” —Ann
Napolitano New York Times best-selling author of Hello Beautiful On a secluded bluff
overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house lavender with gingerbread trim a home that
contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a
teenager it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are
still clothes in the closets marbles rolling across the floors and dishes in the cupboards
even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane a
place to escape her volatile mother. Twenty years later now a Harvard archivist she returns
home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage.
Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner Genevieve a
summer person from Beacon Hill has gutted it transforming the house into a glossy white
monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely Genevieve is convinced that the
house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She
hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane
uncovers—of lovers lost at sea romantic longing shattering loss artistic awakening
historical artifacts stolen and sold and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than
Maine itself. Enthralling richly imagined filled with psychic mediums and charlatans
spirits and past lives mothers marriage and the legacy of alcoholism this is a deeply
moving novel about the land we inhabit the women who came before us and the ways in which
none of us will ever truly leave this earth.
