Showing results by author "Lynn Steger Strong" in All Categories

Elizabeth is tired. Years after coming to New York to try to build a life, she has found herself with two kids, a husband, two jobs, a PhD - and now they're filing for bankruptcy. As she tries to balance her dream and the impossibility of striving toward it while her work and home lives feel poised to fall apart, she wakes at ungodly hours to run miles by the icy river, struggling to quiet her thoughts.

It’s December twenty-second and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance.

When Maya Taylor, an English professor with a tendency to hide in her books, sends her daughter to Florida to look after a friend's child, she does so with the best of intentions; it's a chance for Ellie, 20 and spiraling, to rebuild her life. But Ellie fears she'll only disappoint again, and in the sprawling hours of one humid afternoon, she makes a mistake that she can't take back.

It’s 22 December and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is their first Christmas since their mother passed. Without her once ever-present advice and gentle nudges to connect with each other when they need it most, they’ve grown distant. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals while also trying to decide what to do with their sole inheritance, their mother’s house.