The summer wives : a novel / Beatriz Williams.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"The Summer Wives is an exquisitely rendered novel that tackles two of my favorite topics: love and money. The glorious setting and drama are enriched by Williams's signature vintage touch. It's at the top of my picks for the beach this summer."

--Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Perfect Couple

New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams brings us the blockbuster novel of the season--an electrifying postwar fable of love, class, power, and redemption set among the inhabitants of an island off the New England coast . . .

In the summer of 1951, Miranda Schuyler arrives on elite, secretive Winthrop Island as a schoolgirl from the margins of high society, still reeling from the loss of her father in the Second World War. When her beautiful mother marries Hugh Fisher, whose summer house on Winthrop overlooks the famous lighthouse, Miranda's catapulted into a heady new world of pedigrees and cocktails, status and swimming pools. Isobel Fisher, Miranda's new stepsister--all long legs and world-weary bravado, engaged to a wealthy Island scion--is eager to draw Miranda into the arcane customs of Winthrop society.

But beneath the island's patrician surface, there are really two clans: the summer families with their steadfast ways and quiet obsessions, and the working class of Portuguese fishermen and domestic workers who earn their living on the water and in the laundries of the summer houses. Uneasy among Isobel's privileged friends, Miranda finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, whose father keeps the lighthouse with his mysterious wife. In summer, Joseph helps his father in the lobster boats, but in the autumn he returns to Brown University, where he's determined to make something of himself. Since childhood, Joseph's enjoyed an intense, complex friendship with Isobel Fisher, and as the summer winds to its end, Miranda's caught in a catastrophe that will shatter Winthrop's hard-won tranquility and banish Miranda from the island for nearly two decades.

Now, in the landmark summer of 1969, Miranda returns at last, as a renowned Shakespearean actress hiding a terrible heartbreak. On its surface, the Island remains the same--determined to keep the outside world from its shores, fiercely loyal to those who belong. But the formerly powerful Fisher family is a shadow of itself, and Joseph Vargas has recently escaped the prison where he was incarcerated for the murder of Miranda's stepfather eighteen years earlier. What's more, Miranda herself is no longer a naïve teenager, and she begins a fierce, inexorable quest for justice for the man she once loved . . . even if it means uncovering every last one of the secrets that bind together the families of Winthrop Island.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In 1951, 18-year-old Miranda Schuyler and her mother arrive on Winthrop Island in Long Island Sound for her mother's marriage to the wealthy Hugh Fisher. Miranda's impulsive stepsister Isobel introduces her to the other families with big summer houses; she also presents her island friend Joseph Vargas, a Brown University student who helps out on his father's lobster boat during the high season. Isobel soon resents the instant connection between Miranda and Joseph, who find joy in their romance despite the challenges from both sides of the class divide. But the promise of a bright future together ends the moment Joseph pleads guilty in the mysterious death of Isobel's father. Decades later, Miranda is back on the island and Joseph has escaped from prison; is it coincidence, or will lingering questions about the night of Fisher's death finally be answered? The author displays a mastery of character building while thoughtfully planting evocative details about the setting and the era's social structures. The intricate and complex web of relationships within stated conventions are skillfully created and add depth to the narrative. VERDICT Longtime Williams fans, readers of historical fiction and mysteries, and anyone seeking engaging plot twists will find satisfaction in these pages. [See Prepub Alert, 1/22/18; library marketing.]-Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Williams' latest, after Cocoa Beach (2017) will captivate readers with rich, romantic stories of being young and falling in love. On sun-kissed Winthrop Island, a summer escape in the Long Island Sound, life is filled with lazy days playing tennis and having lunch at the club, governed by the rules of 1950s high society. When Miranda Schuyler spends her first summer on the island, she falls instantly in love with Joseph, an island native who loves her fiercely back. But Joseph is a yearlong resident a lobster fisherman and the two are torn apart by class rivalries. When they defy the rules, they find themselves caught up in the lives and lies of the previous generations' secrets. Readers are taken into the past to witness the histories that shaped the island's affairs, and into the future to see how, despite people's efforts to keep things the same, time passes and the world changes. The writing is precise and descriptive, and reading The Summer Wives is like watching a film, complete with love and drama to be envied, bemoaned, and enjoyed.--Foti, Nicole Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Twenty years after a murder at her family's tony Long Island Sound summer enclave, an expatriate actress returns to right a terrible injustice and heal her broken heart.From June to August, generations of fishermen from Winthrop Island's year-round Portuguese community have supplied the lobsters and occasional bootleg for bridge parties, weddings, golf tournaments, and other social occasions organized by the island's patrician cottagers. Just as the locals steer carefully around summer people, the "purebloods" are ever mindful of subtle social gradations within their own set. As one of them, Isobel Fisher, remarks to her divorced father, Hugh, on the day of his wedding, "Thank God you've found a dear, lovely woman to marryand not some gimlet goddess from the Club." It's 1951, and the Fishers are still regarded as new money (derived from an ancestor's investment in toilets), their summer redoubt, Greyfriars, built on the less fashionable end of the island, next door to the lighthouse. If the summer crowd and locals are in perfect accord over one thing, it's Isobel's wild streak and too-close friendship with the lighthouse keeper's handsome son, Joseph Vargas, while engaged to a scion of the old guard. As she tells her soon-to-be stepsister, Miranda Schuyler (who has her own thoughts about Joseph), "I haven't got your brains, I'm afraid. I need a little action to keep me happy." As in many Williams novels, there's quite a bit of zigzagging though the 1930s, '50s, and '60s to fill in the characters' backstories and milk the main plot intrigue: the murder of Hugh Fisher and a homicide verdict that's fishier than a Fourth of July clambake. Eyebrows lift when the victim's stepdaughter, Miranda, steps onto the island for the first time in decades. Since moving to Europe she's become a successful actress, never mind the enormous shiner her movie-star sunglasses can't quite conceal. To outward appearances, the salacious curiosity about her stepfather's murder which drove her from the island has greatly faded. Even her dear, lovely mother and Isobel, still single (and sullen), appear to have moved on, converting Greyfriars into a glorified boardinghouse and calling it an artists' colony. Meanwhile, the family of Joseph Vargasthe admitted killer sent to Sing Singis stone-faced about his recent prison escape and rumored sightings near the island. Helping Miranda in her effort to clear Josephwhom she believes innocent, though she keeps her reasons close to the vestare her rambunctious half brother, Hugh Jr., (born after their father's murder), the ladies boarding at Greyfriars, and old-shoe banker Clayton Monk, Isobel's square, endearingly steady ex-flame. As Miranda's Shakespearean namesake would say: "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't."With just the right touch of bitters, Williams (Cocoa Beach, 2017, etc.) mixes a satisfyingly tempestuousand eminently beachworthyfollow-up to her beloved Schuyler Sisters series. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.