Couverture / Jaquette

Nearing thirty and trying to avoid the inescapable fact that they have failed to live up to everyone's expectations and their own aspirations, cousins and childhood best friends Lizzie, Elyse, and Isobel seek respite in an oddly shaped, three-story house that sits on a bluff sixty feet above the Mississippi River.

As they work to restore the nearly condemned house, each woman faces uncomfortable truths about their own failings. Lizzie seeks answers to a long-held family secret about her father in her grandmother's jumble of mementos and the home's hidden spaces. Elyse's obsession with an old flame leads her to a harrowing mistake that threatens to destroy her sister's wedding, and Isobel's quest for celebrity tempts her to betray confidences in ways that would irreparably damage her two cousins.

This sharply observed account of the restoration of a house built out of spite but filled with memories of love is also an account of friendship and how relying on each other's insights and strengths provides the women a way to get what they need instead of what they want.

Note biographique

Courtney Miller Santo teaches creative writing to college students and lives in Memphis with her husband, two children, and retired racing greyhound.

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