A Happier Life

Harvey (The Summer of Songbirds) spins a moving tale of a heartbroken young woman discovering her family’s secrets. Keaton Smith, a marketing guru in New York City, leaves her job after learning her boyfriend has just gotten her boss pregnant. Keaton then retreats to her hometown of Beaufort, N.C., occupying herself with helping her mother and uncle ready her grandparents’ abandoned house for sale. The grandparents, Townsend and Becks, disappeared almost 50 years earlier and were presumed dead after their wrecked car was discovered in a creek. Their lives have long been a forbidden subject for the Smiths. When Keaton arrives at the house, which she didn’t know was still in the family, she quickly gathers that nothing has been changed there since 1976, the year her grandparents were last seen, and grows determined to find out what happened to them. In a parallel narrative from Becks’s point of view in 1976, Harvey breathes life into the home, where Townsend and Becks regularly host dinner parties that make them the toast of the town. Gradually, Harvey reveals the reasons behind Becks’s disenchantment with her life and desire for a change. The tautly plotted story thrums with yearning as Becks and Keaton each seek meaning for their lives. This is women’s fiction at its best. Agent: Elisabeth Weed, Book Group. (June)