In Wonderland

A Novel

By: Joyce Maynard

In one golden summer, Frances trades her working-class world for an elite Maine lakeside estate—where privilege and betrayal play a deadly game in this coming of age drama.

For Frances, becoming a mother's helper at Wonderland feels like stepping into a fairy tale. The marble lions, the wooden boats, the pristine grounds—it's everything her modest childhood wasn't. Even better, she gets to spend the summer of 1986 with Forrest Emerson, her father's charismatic childhood friend who escaped their neighborhood to build this perfect world.

But beneath Wonderland’s shimmering surface, nothing is quite what it seems. When Forrest’s wife Regina draws Frances into her private world, the teenager finds herself witness to the intimate secrets of adult lives. As the summer heat builds, so do the tensions within Wonderland’s walls. By Labor Day, a death will shatter the crystal-clear waters of Lake Catherine, leaving Frances to question everything she thought she knew about privilege, power, and the price of belonging.

©2026 by Joyce Maynard. (P)2026 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.