{ The Ocean in Winter by Elizabeth de Veer - TLC Book Tour }

 

About The Ocean in Winter

Publisher : Blackstone Publishing; Unabridged edition (July 6, 2021)

Hardcover : 336 pages

 

The lives of the three Emery sisters were changed forever when Alex, eleven at the time, found their mother drowned in the bathtub of their home. After their mother’s suicide, the girls’ father shut down emotionally, leaving Alex responsible for caring for Colleen, then eight, and little Riley, just four. Now the girls are grown and navigating different directions. Alex, a nurse, has been traveling in India and grieving her struggle to have a child; Colleen is the devoted mother of preteens in denial that her marriage is ending; and Riley has been leading what her sisters imagine to be the dream life of a successful model in New York City. Decades may have passed, but the unresolved trauma of their mother’s death still looms over them creating distance between the sisters.

Then on a March night, a storm rages near the coast of northeastern Massachusetts. Alex sits alone in an old farmhouse she inherited from a stranger. The lights are out because of the storm; then, an unexpected knock at the door. When Alex opens it, her beautiful younger sister stands before her. Riley has long been estranged from their family, prompting Colleen to hire the private investigator from whom they’d been awaiting news. Comforted by her unexpected presence, Alex holds back her nagging questions: How had Riley found her? Wouldn’t the dirt roads have been impassable in the storm? Why did Riley insist on disappearing back into the night?

After her mysterious visitation, Alex and Colleen are determined to reconcile with Riley and to face their painful past, but the closer they come to finding their missing sister, the more they fear they’ll only be left with Riley’s secrets. An unforgettable story about grief, love, and what it means to be haunted, The Ocean in Winter marks the debut of a remarkable new voice in fiction.

”Do we choose our memories, or do our memories choose us? That’s the central question for the three sisters in Elizabeth de Veer’s emotionally rich, incandescent debut novel. Ocean in Winter is a page-turner of a book with a family mystery at its core, and profoundly explores the ways in which women struggle to rebuild their lives after grief and trauma. You won’t want to put it down once you start.” —Holly Robinson, author of Beach Plum Island and Chance Harbor

Purchase Links

Blackstone Publishing | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Elizabeth de Veer

Elizabeth de Veer has a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and has been admitted to writing residencies at the Jentel Artist Residency, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a member of several writing groups, including Grub Street Writers’ Collective of Boston, the Newburyport Writers’ Group, Sisters in Crime New England, and the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. She lives in a small town in Northeast Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and labradoodle.

To learn more, check out her web site at elizabethdeveer.com.

Connect with Elizabeth

Website | Facebook | Instagram

Review:

A beautiful story, although sad and at times hard to read.  If you are affected by talk of suicide, then it may not be the book for you because it does touch on the subject.

The story follows three sisters, and their lives, growing up after the death of their mom to suicide.  The oldest of the three, Avery, finds their mom the day she commits suicide, and from that moment on she becomes responsible for her younger sisters.  Their father shuts down, not able to deal with the loss himself, and so in a sense they lose both their mother and father.

The sisters all grew up and chose different paths for their lives, but a stormy night in the future, brings them all together, and they quickly realize that none of them ever got past the death of their mother.

The author brings us a story of love, sisterly bond, family trauma and it touches on depression, grief, suicide and other topics which may trigger some people.

 

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and Blackstone Publishing for providing me with a review copy.