On a freezing January night, LaRee Farnham answers a knock at her door to find a policewoman holding three-year-old Vita Gray, whose mother has just been murdered a few miles away. LaRee raises Vita with fierce love and attention, at the same time trying to shield her from the aftermath of the murder, which has deeply divided the histoiric village of Oyster Creek.
Born out of wedlock, Vita is the product of the town's two very different cultures: the hard-working fishing families of Portuguese descent and the "washashores" from the mainland, who've drifted to the coast for its beauty. At sixteen, Vita is shy and isolated, estranged from her father, and bullied at school, but she is determined to come out of herself, step-by-step.
When the shocking details of her past surface suddenly, Vita feels utterly betrayed by those closest to her, and the fraught tension between Oyster Creek's two cultures comes to a head. LaRee must ask hard questions about herself as a mother, while Vita turns to unexpected avenues to find meaning and discovers that the truth is almost never found in black-and-white...
Read the reviews!
"Expertly explores the complexities of domestic life and the tug of forbidden love."
-Elizabeth Strout, New York Times Bestselling Author of Olive Kitteridge
"Superior literary fiction."
-Library Journal
"Subtly nuanced, beautifully crafted prose...Schmidt delivers a thoughtful, realistically complicated exploration on love, marriage, friendship, and community."
-John Charles, Chicago Tribune
Reading level: Ages 18 and up
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: NAL Trade; 1 edition (August 7, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451237870
ISBN-13: 978-0451237873
Available in paperback and electronic formats
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