First published 2017
Caroline Murphy swore she was done with Peachtree Bluff, the small Southern coastal town where she spent her summers. New York was her life. Then her high-society marriage collapses in spectacularly public fashion, and Caroline, pregnant and trailing her nine-year-old daughter, has nowhere else to go. She shows up at her mother Ansley's waterfront home with her pride in pieces. Ansley built something real after her late husband left her nearly broke despite his promises. She runs a design business, owns her independence, and welcomes Caroline without hesitation. But her other daughters soon follow: Sloane, whose husband is deployed overseas, and Emerson, the youngest and a working actress. The house fills up fast. As Ansley tries to hold space for all three daughters, she feels the self she worked hard to construct start to loosen. Then a figure from her past walks back into her life, and the secret she has kept from her daughters for their entire lives moves dangerously close to the surface. This is the first book in the Peachtree Bluff series, and it lays down the question that runs through all of it: what holds a family together once the version of it you believed in turns out to be incomplete.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, family-drama
Vibes: character-driven, emotional, heartfelt, intimate, introspective
Tropes: found-family, hidden-secrets, homecoming, second-chance
Setting: Peachtree Bluff, New York
368 pages · Paperback · Gallery Books