Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 496 pages
Audiobook Length: 16 hours and 42 minutes
First Published: 2019
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Publisher’s Description
A lifetime of secrets. A history untold.
No. It is a simple word, uttered on a summer porch in 1936. And it will haunt Kitty Milton for the rest of her life. Kitty and her husband, Ogden, are both from families considered the backbone of the country. But this refusal will come to be Kitty’s defining moment, and its consequences will ripple through the Milton family for generations. For while they summer on their island in Maine, anchored as they are to the way things have always been, the winds of change are beginning to stir.
In 1959 New York City, two strangers enter the Miltons’ circle. One captures the attention of Kitty’s daughter, while the other makes each of them question what the family stands for. This new generation insists the times are changing. And in one night, everything does.
So much so that in the present day, the third generation of Miltons doesn’t have enough money to keep the island in Maine. Evie Milton’s mother has just died, and as Evie digs into her mother’s and grandparents’ history, what she finds is a story as unsettling as it is inescapable, the story that threatens the foundation of the Milton family myth.
Quotes from The Guest Book
Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks between.
Reg was black and Len was white, but together they were neither. Or rather, together they were both.
Ghost stories belong to the middle-aged, thought it’s always the young who play the dramas.
Metaphor … was for the young. Or, at any rate, for the younger than she.
About Sarah Blake
Sarah Blake is the author of several novels, including The Guest Book, Grange House, and The Postmistress. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, the poet Joshua Weiner, and their two children. Visit the author’s website →
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