Jane Porter, returning to Twin Rivers, Rhode Island, comes home to help her sister care for their ailing mother, but Jane is also drawn home by a secret from her past, a secret she's finally determined to reveal.

"Barb and John Frost are testy and bored with each other after fifty years of marriage. At least they have their daughters--Barb's favorite, Juliet, and John's darling, Sadie. The girls themselves couldn't be more different, but at least they [get] along, more or less--until the day John has a stroke, and their house of cards came tumbling down. Now Sadie has to come home to care for her beloved dad--and face the love of her old life. Now Juliet has...

A poignant, evocative story that celebrates the magic of motherhood, the joys of coming home, and the price we so willingly pay for love.

"A lucid and moving debut novel on the interconnection between work and life, loneliness and kinship, and the projects that occupy our time. How do we take stock of a life--by what means, and by what measure? This is the question that preoccupies Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, Alice struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental,...

When caregiver Faith McCallum arrives at the enchanted lakeside estate of Avalon's renowned Bellamy family, she's intent on rebuilding her shattered life and giving her two daughters a chance at a better future. But she faces a formidable challenge in the form of her stubborn and difficult new employer, Alice Bellamy. While Faith proves a worthy match for her sharp-tongued client, she often finds herself at a loss for words in the presence of Mason...