Chance Harbor

September 15, 2015
Catherine has a loving husband, a steady job, a good relationship with her mother, Eve, and an adopted daughter, Willow, who's making it through her teen years relatively unscathed. Then her husband drops a bomb: he's been having an affair with one of his high-school students, and she's pregnant. As Catherine copes with her heartbreak, her estranged sister (and Willow's mother), Zoe, reenters her life, and now Willow wants to know who her father is. Meanwhile, Eve is dealing with devastating memories of her own as she prepares to sell the family's beach house on Prince Edward Island. Robinson (Haven Lake, 2015) specializes in emotionally potent ensemble fiction, featuring realistic characters in dramatic situations. The plot is intricate, with numerous narrators presenting their points of view, and the characters are sympathetic and realistically flawed. Even Nola, the pregnant high-school student whose affair with Russell destroys Catherine's marriage, is more than a one-dimensional teenage vixen. Robinson's writing keeps getting better, and this exploration of family bonds and love in its many forms will appeal to fans of mainstream women's fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)