***NYC Big Book Award 2024 Distinguished Favorite for Women's Fiction***
Whoever said you can't go home again didn't know Sadie Jane Klein.
When mechanically-minded Sadie Klein, Ph.D., finds herself poufy dress-deep in a well-meaning scheme gone awry, she escapes from a riverboat casino with the help of Dutch Holland, an old teenage crush she hasn't seen in fifteen years. Sadie runs to her childhood home intent on settling down in coastal Georgia's Canaan Cove, where her Jewish grandparents raised the brainy nerd girl and her queer brother-outsiders on the outskirts of town. More than a decade later, that seaside hamlet has seen some changes, but everyone thinks they know everyone's business, and the rumor mill still spins fast.
Sadie's high stakes shenanigans on open waters include an accomplice, Tristan Pembroke, the heir apparent of the major energy conglomerate that is also Sadie's employer. Playboy Tristan is a trust fund kid looking for an even bigger payday, while Sadie wants full rights to an invention patent pending so that she can do some good. They learn too late that big business won't suffer the trickeries of a little geotechnical engineer, no matter how brilliant she is, and the mysterious Dutch Holland may be more involved than their accidental run-in makes it appear.
With a present told from Sadie's point of view and glimpses of the past seen through teenage Dutch's eyes, a love story of yanked-apart teens that never truly let go unfolds. Old secrets and outright lies come to light with a backdrop of sticky summer nights and peach moonshine in a quirky ocean-side town full of bighearted characters. Sadie can't outrun her past mistakes, and forgiveness is a steep hill to climb, but after living all over the world, home might be right back where it all began.
