Goodnight Stranger

June 1, 2019
Gault's moody, quietly chilling debut novel follows 28-year-old Lydia Moore, who works at the information booth on Wolf Island, a fictional Cape Cod island that is smaller and plainer than Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. Lydia, whose parents are dead, is a triplet. One of her brothers died in infancy; the other, severely socially anxious Lucas, has become her responsibility. When a mysterious young man who calls himself Cole arrives on the island, Lucas becomes convinced that he's the reincarnation of their dead brother. Over the next few months, as winter arrives, Cole insinuates himself into their lives. Lydia, both attracted to the stranger and suspicious of him, works up the nerve to go off-island to investigate him. In the process, she finds out more than she would like about the history of her family. A suspenseful meditation on the many ways in which the past, consciously or not, shapes the present, the novel flirts with fantasy but ultimately stays grounded in the elemental realities of wind, tides, and the eroding foundations of memory.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)