First published 2019
Thirteen-year-old Jessie Levin arrives at her grandmother's Nantucket home expecting another carefree summer with her siblings. Instead, she finds herself alone. Her pregnant sister Blair remains stuck in Boston carrying twins. Her sister Kirby has abandoned family tradition to work on Martha's Vineyard, swept up in civil rights activism. Her brother Tiger fights as an infantry soldier in Vietnam. Jessie feels abandoned in the old house with only her grandmother and anxious mother for company. Both women guard secrets that add tension to an already strained household. Outside their world, the country convulses with change as Ted Kennedy's car plunges into Chappaquiddick waters and astronauts take their first steps on the moon. The Levin family faces their own upheavals that mirror the national turmoil. As summer progresses, Jessie must navigate the adult complexities suddenly surrounding her while longing for the simple family summers that seem lost forever.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Nantucket, Boston, Martha's Vineyard, Chappaquiddick
Period: 1969, Vietnam War, Apollo 11 Moon Landing
433 pages · Kindle Edition · Little, Brown and Company
Content warnings: war