Author: Holly LeCraw
Publisher/Year: Random House, 2010
Synopsis: Marcella di Pavarese Atkinson has always longed for love, warmth, understanding. Seven years ago, she believed she had found it, although illicitly, with Cecil McClatchey–a married father of two, and a longtime summer acquaintance from Cape Cod. But on the night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil’s wife was found dead, and Cecil died soon after, an uncharged suspect. Now Marcella lives alone, divorced, estranged from her teenaged daughter, and hobbled by her grief and guilt.
Meanwhile, Cecil’s grown son, Jed, returns to the Cape for the summer for the first time in years, with his sister and her young children. One morning, in an upstairs closet, he finds a bathing suit he recognizes as Marcella’s–a relic, unbeknownst to him, of his father’s affair. A hunch, his years-long hunger for answers, and the memory of a teenaged crush send Jed looking for her. But when Marcella and Jed, to their deep surprise, fall into a passionate affair of their own, they must hide it from their families and also begin, reluctantly, to look more closely at the past. What they find is shocking, heartbreaking, and, perhaps, the beginning of healing; but as they confront their shared pain, a crisis is brewing in the present that will force them, and us, to think about the very nature of love.
What Others Have To Say
The New York Times
"I understand that this is a bodice-ripper couched as a literary novel, something you can, without blushing, leave on the white rattan coffee table at your vacation rental. But does it have to take itself so seriously?"
Kirkus Reviews
"Whether open or suppressed, passion rules events, but this is not a murder mystery; instead LeCraw reveals the complex moral and psychological mystery within all relationships."
Entertainment Weekly
"...Holly LeCraw wades slowly into her narrative instead of diving straight in, so the story takes a while to pick up. But once it does, the suburban afflictions that are drowning these characters make it difficult to put down"
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