First published 2019
Jess Abbot is thirty-two years old and has nothing left. Her job is gone, her apartment is gone, and her eight-year-old son Chance died in an accident that she cannot stop replaying. She packs her remaining belongings and drives to Pine Lake, a small mountain town, where she has agreed to care for an old woman named Lucy. Lucy is odd in ways that are hard to explain. She seems to know things she should not know, and she tells Jess almost immediately that she is a loose end who needs closure. Jess is not the only one staying in Lucy's large Victorian house. Star is there too, a teenage runaway carrying something she refuses to say out loud. Then there is a small boy who keeps appearing with heart-shaped stones, bringing both a hope for reconciliation and a warning Jess cannot ignore. The longer Jess stays in Pine Lake, the clearer it becomes that she and Star were brought to this house for a reason. Both of them are running from the same kind of damage. The question is whether facing what broke them can also be the thing that puts them back together.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, haunting, introspective, mysterious, redemptive
Tropes: found-family, healing-journey, mysterious-mentor, second-chance
Setting: Pine Lake, Victorian house
335 pages · Paperback · Lake Union Publishing
Content warnings: child-death, death