Book Description

From the acclaimed author of Sailing Lessons and Mystic Summer—a “charming gem of a novel” (Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author)—an evocative and moving tale about what it means to be a family, set over the course of one unforgettable Connecticut summer. Siblings Perry, Jake, and Phoebe Goodwin were raised on the shore of a beautiful Connecticut lake in a close-knit family. The eldest of the family, forty-two-year-old Perry has long craved order as surely as his charismatic younger brother, Jake, has avoided it. Phoebe, their baby sister, courts both. As adults, the Goodwin siblings could not be more different. Perry is as married to his career in New York as a risk analyst as Phoebe is to her college sweetheart, but both have returned to Connecticut to raise their young families. Charismatic Jake, however, has spent his years living away wanderlust and unable to settle. The three have not spent much time together…until this summer. On the afternoon of their grandmother’s ninety-seventh birthday party, the siblings reunite at the lake house where Jake stuns the family with a stranger on his arm and an announcement. Olivia Cossette, daughter of a French chef, does not share the traditional Goodwin New England upbringing or sense of family. What she does share is parenthood, as the single mother of a little girl who does not speak. While the Goodwin family struggle to welcome the newcomers over the course of the summer, a series of bad choices made by each family member finally unravels, leaving them all to question just what truly makes a family. Can one fateful moment on a July afternoon undo a lifetime of good intentions? Only one thing is for certain—this extraordinary summer has irrevocably changed the Goodwin family and all that remains is the uncertain future. With Hannah McKinnon’s signature “enticing and refreshing” (Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author) prose, this is a warm-hearted novel that is perfect for fans of Mary Alice Monroe’s the Beach House series and the works of Elin Hilderbrand.