Wrenn Bailey has lived all her life on Cape Cod with her mother Lindy, older sister Shannon, and younger sister Piper. Growing up, life was dictated by the seasons with sleepy gray winters where only the locals stayed on, followed by the sharp influx and colorful bustle of summer tourists who swept up the elbow of the Cape and infiltrated their small paradise.
But it wasn’t just the tourists who interrupted Wrenn’s formative years; her father—brilliant but troubled photographer Caleb—has long made a habit of drifting in and out of his girls’ lives. Until the one summer he left the Cape and did not return again.
Now, almost twenty years later, Caleb has come back one last time, suffering from pancreatic cancer and seeking absolution. Wrenn and her sisters each respond differently to their father’s return, determined to find closure. But that means returning to the past and revisiting old wounds—wounds that cause the tightknit Bailey women to confront their own wishes and wants, and admit to their own wrong-doings over the years. In a place that brings both great comfort and great pain, the Bailey sisters experience a summer on the Cape that promises not only hard endings, but perhaps, hopeful new beginnings.
This week on Tempted by …. I have dug out my copy of Sailing Lessons by Hannah McKinnon, which I bought after reading this review by Monica on her blog, A Southern Girls Bookshelf.
I picked up on this book, mainly because of the setting on Cape Cod, which is always something that draws me to a story. Plus, the description of a book about relationships within families, especially between sisters, is something that is right up my street and I always find makes for an emotional and satisfying read. I am fascinated by human relationships, and families always have multiple levels of complications that provide mountains of ripe fodder for good writer. Monica seemed to find the story rich and rewarding and her description was enticing enough to persuade me that I would enjoy it too.
I really enjoy visiting Monica’s blog as she and I seem to have similar taste in books but, whilst we read a certain amount of the same titles, she also has some very different titles on there that I would not come across otherwise – just like Sailing Lessons – and I always appreciate a chance to broaden my reading horizons. If you haven’t come across Monica’s blog before, you should pop on over and have a look at it here.
And if you like sound of Sailing Lessons, you can buy a copy of that here.
