Montauk, Long Island, 1938.
For three months, this humble fishing village will serve as the playground for New York City’s wealthy elite. Beatrice Bordeaux was looking forward to a summer of reigniting the passion between her and her husband, Harry. Instead, she learns she’ll be spending twelve weeks sequestered with the high society wives at The Montauk Manor, while Harry pursues other interests in the city.
College educated, but raised a modest country girl in Pennsylvania, Bea has never felt fully comfortable among these privileged women. She longs to be a mother as well as a loving wife, but after five years of marriage she remains childless while Harry is increasingly remote. Despite lavish parties and leisure activities, Bea is lost and lonely and befriends the manor’s laundress whose work ethic and family life stir memories of who she once was.
And as she drifts further from the society women, Bea finds herself drawn to a man nothing like her husband—stoic, plainspoken and enigmatic. Inspiring a strength and courage she had almost forgotten, his presence forces her to face a haunting tragedy of her past and question her future.
