About the Book
The Setting
Provincetown is one place with two lives, morphing itself depending on the time of year.
In the summer, no place is more alive. The gay bars, spilling color and glitter onto the tourist-clotted streets. Artists painting in front yards and down at the shore. The smells of saltwater taffy and fried clams. In the winter the excitement dies down, except for the year-rounders, the writers, and a few barnacled souls drinking away the brooding, cold days.
Located at the very tip of Cape Cod, this historical seaside community has long attracted artists, dreamers, outsiders, and those seeking reinvention. Its rich cultural history, dramatic coastline, and close-knit community provide the perfect backdrop for a story where memory, belonging, and long-buried secrets collide.
Throughout the novel, Provincetown is more than a setting. It becomes a force that shapes the characters, deepens the mystery, and reminds readers that the past is never so far out at sea that it won’t return again with the tide.
The Story
Sisters Pia and Jenn Cutter are thrust back into the chaos of their often turbulent childhood by the death of their father, a renowned Cape Cod artist and lifelong drinker old enough to be their grandfather.
While the famous around them made creative history, Pia and Jenn spent their childhood summers in Provincetown in blissful ignorance of adult matters. Instead, they focused on doing whatever kid stuff they wanted under the blazing sun, in the cooling sea, and amid colorful shelves of penny candy.
But now as adults, out of nowhere, town locals begin attempting to erase them from their father’s life and their shared history. Someone then steals their father’s corpse, and a mysterious stranger surfaces, claiming to be the real and only daughter of the old artist. Who the hell’s this “daughter”? The sisters feel on the edge of an ancient cliff, facing an impossible choice: Do they protect themselves from the old craziness, or drop anchor and fight?
Pia and Jenn have no idea how deeply twisted are the crimes against them.