For thirteen-year-old Trevor Kennedy, taking photos helps make sense of his fractured world. His father, Kurt, struggles to keep a business going while also caring for Trevor's aging grandfather, whose hoarding has reached dangerous levels. Trevor's mother, Elisabeth, all but ignores her son while doting on his five-year-old sister, Gracy, and pilfering useless drugstore items. Trevor knows he can count on little Gracy's unconditional love and his art teacher's encouragement. None of that compensates for the bullying he has endured at school for as long as he can remember. But where Trevor once silently tolerated the jabs and name-calling, now anger surges through him in ways he's powerless to control. Only Crystal, a store clerk dealing with her own loss, sees the deep fissures in the Kennedy family - in the haunting photographs Trevor brings to be developed, and in the palpable distance between Elisabeth and her son. And as their lives become more intertwined, each will be pushed to the breaking point, with shattering, unforeseeable consequences.
One November morning, Ben Bailey, part-time history professor and part-time bartender, walks out the front door of his Flagstaff, Arizona home into a blizzard where he finds a young Navajo man beaten and dying in the newly fallen snow.
When he meets the young mans older sister, Shadi, he begins to question the decisions he has made and the future he once thought was certain. What happens as a result of this serendipitous meeting sends Ben, who is struggling both in his professional life and in his personal life, into a tailspin. As he helps her seek justice for her brother, the carefully woven threads of the life, and the delicate web of lies, he has spun begin to unravel.
It's been five years since the Mason family vacationed at the lakeside cottage in northeastern Vermont, close to where prize-winning novelist Samuel Mason grew up. The summers that Sam, his wife, Mena, and their twins Franny and Finn spent at Lake Gormlaith were noisy, chaotic, and nearly perfect. But since Franny's death, the Masons have been flailing, one step away from falling apart. Lake Gormlaith is Sam's last, best hope of rescuing his son from a destructive path and salvaging what's left of his family.
As Sam struggles with grief, writer's block, and a looming deadline, Mena tries to repair the marital bond she once thought was unbreakable. But even in this secluded place, the unexpectedin the form of an over-zealous fan, a surprising friendship, and a second chancecan change everything.
In Two Rivers, Vermont, Harper Montgomery is living a life overshadowed by grief and guilt. Since the death of his wife twelve years earlier, Harper has narrowed his world to working at the local railroad and raising his daughter, Shelly. Still wracked with sorrow over his loss and plagued by his role in a brutal, long-ago crime, he wants only to make amends for his past mistakes. Then one day, a train derails in Two Rivers and Harper finds a chance at atonement. One of the survivors, a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl, needs a place to stay, and Harper offers to take her in. But soon he suspects that Maggie's appearance is not the simple case of happenstance it first appeared to be.
Piper Kincaid has never been able to forget the summer she turned fourteen--or understand its consequences. At thirty and diagnosed with breast cancer, Piper is drawn back to that time and filled with regret. As she attempts to reassemble the fragments of her history, what emerges is the kaleidoscopic portrait of a young woman whose indefatigable spirit prevails, despite shattered dreams. An evocative, richly-told novel of coming-of-age and coming-to-terms, "Undressing the Moon" finds grace in wreckage and hope in a broken life.
When Indie Brown was four years old, she was struck by lightning. In the oft-told version of the story, Indie’s life was heroically saved by her mother. But Indie’s own recollection of the event, while hazy, is very different. Most of Indie’s childhood memories are like this—tinged with vague, unsettling images and suspicions.
Now, her mother is gravely ill, and her sister, struggling with a challenge of her own, needs her help. In Arizona, faced with Lily’s hysteria and their mother’s instability, Indie slowly begins to confront the truth about her half-remembered past and the legacy that still haunts her family.
And as she revisits her childhood, with its nightmares and lost innocence, she finds she must reevaluate the choices of her adulthood—including her most precious relationships.
Effie Greer watches the final days of summer play out from her grandparents' home in Lake Gormlaith, Vermont, with her boyfriend, Max. Despite the idyllic setting, Effie is hiding a secret. With a heated temper and shattered past, Max is headed toward self-destruction, and Effie, unwilling to let go, is close behind. Slowly, Effie begins to gain the strength necessary to leave the suffocating relationship. But on the evening she decides to go, Max's violence results in a tragic boating accident and the death of a child.
Unable to deal with her role in that terrible August night, Effie drifts aimlessly from city to city. Only when she learns that Max has died of a heroin overdose does she find the strength to return to Lake Gormlaith and face the demons that have kept her away. No longer a naive young girl, Effie is now a woman desperately seeking absolution. She ultimately finds her chance in the most unlikely of people.
