First published 2005
This collection brings together three standalone novels. In Sheer Abandon, the worlds of newspaper journalism and backpacker Thailand collide in Vincenzi's most gripping tale yet. The Golden Cup follows Honor Trevannion, an elderly woman confined to bed in her Cornish valley home called Paradise. When a young American arrives with an old wedding photograph, seeking a lost relative, Honor grows distressed. Her family tries to help, unaware of the fifty-year-old secrets she guards. As Honor's condition worsens, she begs her granddaughter Joss to locate hidden letters before it's too late. The revelations threaten to shatter their peaceful valley life. In The Summer I Dared, Julia Bechtel survives a deadly boating accident off Maine's coast that kills nine others. The forty-year-old wife and mother has always chosen the safe path, labeled obedient by her controlling family. But facing death changes everything. Connected to Noah, the divorced lobsterman who saved her, and Kim, a silent twenty-one-year-old survivor, Julia discovers new possibilities on Big Sawyer Island. She awakens to inner strength she never knew existed, ready to embrace uncertainty and create a different life.
Genres: romance, literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Big Sawyer Island, Cornwall, Maine, Paradise, Thailand
Period: 1950s, 2000s
479 pages · Reader's Digest