The Long Way Back

About the series

Seventeen. The age Dee and Nora Gray had been planning for since Nora could walk, and the age she’d finally choose where her life would go.

Dee had been barely older than that when she arrived in Merrin Point: nineteen, broke, and carrying a newborn wrapped in a borrowed blanket. Nora’s father, Martin Hale, had stayed in Boston. His parents had a plan for him, and it didn’t include a teenage girlfriend and a baby. He became a heart surgeon, married well, and had two more daughters. For seventeen years he didn’t send a cent, but every Sunday at six, he called.

Merrin Point took Dee in the way small towns do: completely, and with no respect for privacy whatsoever. Now she runs Dee’s Boat Hire & Bait from a shed that smells of diesel and coffee. She’d tell you she wouldn’t live anywhere else, and she’d mean it.

Nora grew up between the bait fridges and the bookshelves, with a sketchbook in one hand and a library book in the other. Art is her first love, and greatness is the plan. This October, two envelopes are on their way to her.

Which will she choose?