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Message in the Sand: A Novel - Softcover

McKinnon, Hannah

 
9781982114572: Message in the Sand: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1982114576 ISBN 13: 9781982114572
Verlag: Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

An emotional and unforgettable tale of a small town irrevocably affected by an unforeseen and shocking event—from the author of the “charming gem of a novel” (Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Mystic Summer.

Wendell Combs is as local as they come. Born and raised in the small town of Saybrook, Connecticut, his venture into the larger world was met with heartbreak. Now, middle-aged and a confirmed bachelor, he seeks solitude from his tour of duty as a soldier back in his hometown, working as head caretaker for wealthy Alan Lancaster’s forty-acre estate, White Pines, a place he has come to love for its beauty, peace, and quiet.

Alan’s eldest daughter, fifteen-year-old Julia, also loves White Pines, but for very different reasons. She and her little sister spend their days riding horses, swimming in the lake, and painting landscapes inspired by the property they adore. While her parents prepare to host their annual summer gala fundraiser, Julia’s eyes are set to the simpler joys of summer: she’s fallen in love with the boy-next-door and longs for their next encounter.

But as the last guests leave on that magical summer night, a tragedy no one could have predicted suddenly occurs, shaking the entire town to its core. Wendell and Julia now face an uncertain future. At the height of their grief, two very different women return to Saybrook: Ginny Feldman, Wendell’s first love, who cannot stay away any longer, and Candace Lancaster, Julia’s estranged aunt who wants nothing to do with the town or the family estate she escaped decades earlier. Now, the only familiar things Julia has to cling to are Wendell and White Pines, but it looks like she’s about to lose both...

With Hannah McKinnon’s “sharp and evocative” (Kirkus Reviews) prose, this stirring and affecting tale explores the connection between people and place and what, ultimately, makes up the fabric of a family.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hannah McKinnon is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Lake Season, Mystic Summer, The Summer House, Sailing Lessons, The View from Here, Message in the Sand, The Darlings, The Summer Club, and The Sandy Page Bookshop. She graduated from Connecticut College and the University of South Australia. She lives in Connecticut, with her family, a flock of chickens, and two raggedy rescue dogs. 

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Chapter One: Wendell One Wendell
A man who’d dwelt every one of his thirty-nine years in Saybrook, Wendell Combs had seen more than a few untoward things in his time. For all its open-faced New England charm, he understood that even quiet hill towns like his own hid their share of unpleasantries behind the virtuous lines of their cobble-stone walls. Still, a lifelong bachelor who’d never seen the wisdom in pulling his gaze away from a good thing, he hadn’t hankered for what may have lain beyond the town’s bucolic boundaries. What was the point? Like the three generations of Combses before him, Wendell knew what he liked, and he liked what he knew. Saybrook had long been a hamlet in the Connecticut hills of Litchfield County, where most of the faces you nodded to at the local market or gas station were the same ones you’d been passing in those very places since childhood. Tucked in the fertile valley at the base of the Housatonic watershed, whose dormant farmlands ran as deep as the tributaries that spawned them, Saybrook seemed to turn a sleepy eye away from time. It was what had drawn the city folk from their noisy urban sprawl and set them scrabbling over the George Washington Bridge and up the Saw Mill River Parkway to cross its borders. Just an hour shy of the wiles of the Big Apple, Saybrook may as well have been a world away. But no matter, the city had come to it.

That morning, hours before most had even stirred in their downy beds, Wendell had risen and climbed into his truck with Trudy. He, too, could have used a few more hours of sleep. After eight years being back home from his tour in Afghanistan, Wendell felt he should’ve been able to silence the dark memories that found him in the night. But last night’s had been worse than usual, and around four a.m. he’d abandoned any hope of rescue via the strategies Dr. Westerberg had pressed him to try in therapy and staggered out to the screened-in porch. There, he collapsed into the Adirondack chair until the rivulets of sweat dried between his shoulder blades, his hands stopped shaking, and the sky lightened. He still thought of Wesley every day, but it had been a long time since the dreams had been that bad.

Now, with one more night behind him, he drove through the sleepy town center. There were only two main roads in town, both owned by the state, and designated so by double-yellow lines and bright signage. All the rest were of the windy scenic sort, as rural as the hills and private lakeshore properties that made up Saybrook. Back when Wendell’s father was the mayor, he used to joke that if you blinked as you drove through, you’d miss the village center. His father had been gone a long time, but little had changed. Historic houses lined the main street, their windows still dark. The New England charm of the tiny town center was not much interrupted by commerce, aside from a gas station, a coffee shop, and the sole restaurant in town that served good burgers but lousy pasta. There were two churches: a sweeping modern design for the Catholics and a traditional white chapel for the Protestants. Wendell wasn’t much for religion, even though his mother had tried, but he supposed the Protestant church was where he’d end up if he had to go. These days, that was of little concern to him; quietude in the great outdoors was the only religion he needed.

Beside him in the cab, Trudy slept on as they passed the stately brick library, the playhouse his godfather had built, and the historical society museum that resided by the library in an antique red barn. Where the two main roads converged at the only stoplight in town, he turned left. The village market was the only thing open, its small parking lot already crowded with pickup trucks whose drivers were probably standing in line at the market deli counter for a fried egg sandwich and cup of coffee. Across the way, the school was closed for the summer, its colorful playground equipment gleaming in the early-morning sun like spit-polished shoes.

A mile north, Wendell swung his truck off the main road and onto Timber Lane, toward the Lancaster place. Here the road narrowed, its paved median void of painted yellow lines. People who lived in this town knew to stay in their own lane, at least the ones who’d grown up here. Trudy lifted her nose from the folds of her blanket and peered out from beneath heavy lids at the scene rolling by. Wendell rested a hand atop her head, and almost immediately, the basset hound resumed her wheezy snore. They passed Lonny Hastings’s dairy farm. The lights were on in the milking barn. When Wendell returned, hours later, the cows would be out in the pasture. Just past the dairy, farmhouses dotted the hill on both sides, their windows shadowy. Outside the driver’s window, the first rosy glimmer of the new day emerged. Wendell glanced at it. It surprised him, the fuss people made over a sunrise: snapping pictures and posting them on all those social media sites. No different than the cardboard sign affixed in the center of town inviting residents to experience sunrise yoga! down at the lake. Wendell shook his head. For him, dawn marked the beginning of another day, an hour after he’d had his first cup of coffee before he drove up to check on the Lancaster place, and two hours before he’d stop at the market for his second cup. He didn’t need to snap a picture.

At the crest of the hill, the sun burst in full on the horizon, and Wendell pulled the tattered brim of his John Deere cap lower on his forehead. He glanced in the rearview mirror. His blue eyes shone back at him. Honest eyes, his mother used to say. Eyes that once knew the ins and outs of almost every front door and backyard in this town. Though some people in town complained there were fewer locals and more transplants from the city. It was nothing new. People bought weekend places, had kids, and moved here full-time. Knocked down walls and put up fences. Expanded. Improved. Wendell didn’t pay it much mind. As his father used to say, when he was sitting behind the first selectman’s desk at town hall, it was how things went.

At a dense grove of pine trees, Wendell turned left onto a gravel driveway and stopped at the gates. The simple wooden sign at the edge of the drive was so discreet you might miss it if you weren’t looking: White Pines. Wendell stopped at the gate and punched in the security code: Alan trusted him with that, as with most everything else on the property, a fact that Wendell harbored little sentiment over. It was business.

At the end of the gravel drive, the big gray house rose up. It was early yet, but he was surprised not to see Alan’s Jeep Wagoneer. Despite his choices of vehicles—a Ferrari, a Porsche, a vintage T-Bird—all covered and stored here on the estate, Alan favored the old wood-paneled Jeep for daily use. But this morning the Wagoneer’s spot by the barn was empty. Wendell put the truck in park and Trudy sat up, her expression little changed in wakefulness. He held the door while she lumbered across the seats and hopped down. “Come on, girl. Time to get to work.”

As Wendell waited for Alan to come down from the house to go over the day’s schedule, he took inventory of the equipment. The Kubota was running low on gas, as were the weed eaters, but they could wait. It was the Scag he was here for. He grasped the orange handles and maneuvered it down the ramp and outside. Today he’d mow the acreage that Alan referred to as the western lawn, where his wife, Anne, kept a vegetable garden....

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Verlag
Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982114576
ISBN 13 
9781982114572
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande