by Tara Conklin
First published 2019
Fiona Skinner stands before her audience, a celebrated poet about to explain the origins of her iconic work, The Love Poem. She takes them back to a big yellow house in Connecticut, where a funeral changed everything for the Skinner children. After their loss, fierce Renee, sensitive Caroline, golden boy Joe, and watchful Fiona experience the Pause, a wild summer that binds them together in their middle-class town. They emerge from this feral time fiercely loyal to each other, carrying these bonds into adulthood. Twenty years later, another family crisis strikes. The siblings must confront the choices they have made and decide what they will sacrifice for love. This test forces them to examine the responsibilities they carry and the duties they resist. As their story unfolds, the novel reveals how we can lose the people closest to us and sometimes find ways to save them.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, relationships, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Connecticut
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
354 pages · Hardcover · Mariner Books