SummaryGrace Hammond Barnett grew up in the emotionally desolate
company of the strangers who were her mother and father.
Her only happy memories are of the times spent with her
younger sister, Melanie, and Jemma, the warm-hearted family
housekeeper who helped fill the void left by Grace's
detached, inaccessible parents. Now a mother herself, Grace
feels trapped in a sterile marriage to a prominent surgeon
and haunted by the recurrent dreams of drowning. Her only
anchor is her cherished daughter, Kate. In the aftermath of her parents' sudden double suicide-a
tragedy that leaves Grace, Melanie, and Jemma reeling-Grace
is bequeathed a house she never knew existed. Leaving her
penthouse in Manhattan on New Year's Eve, she travels alone
to Sabbath Landing, New York, to a log cabin house on
Canterbury Island, surrounded by Diamond Lake. Here, Grace
meets Luke Keegan, a local fishing guide whose family
history is inextricably bound to hers...and to a
devastating secret buried in the cloudy memory of
childhood. With compassion and elegance, Stephanie Gertler crafts an
emotionally rich story of what it means to survive and
thrive against all odds. Like its intricate, interlocking
pieces that branch out to shape lives, The Puzzle Bark Tree
plumbs the mysteries of the people we can never truly
know...of the incomplete memories we carry with us, and the
love that can make us whole.
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