Emerald Lake

Emerald Lodge was bought by Jane Weber’s grandparents and she’s summered at the lake house all her life. Now she’s in her 80s, enjoying the relative peace with grandchildren underfoot, when one of them brings home what is clearly a human bone. Found on the lakeshore, it dredges up a past Jane thought she’d gotten away with. It also brings readers back to Jane’s early years at Emerald Lake, when her genteel-sleaze stepfather took advantage of powerless locals to enrich himself while they fell further into poverty. As chapters alternate perspectives between Jane and Officer Mundy, the steely woman who sees through Jane’s forgetful-old-lady facade, readers are taken on a tour of the gentrifying past meeting the present while generational secrets slowly unfurl. Prose has taken quite a detour here from her Maid books, but the same steely eye for character and spot-on inner voices remain. One for fans of Jodi Picoult and Barbara Kingsolver.—Henrietta Thornton