Sunlight Finds You
A Read With Jenna Book Club Pick, as featured on Today
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A forbidden love blows open the world of a young woman, altering the trajectory of her life.
Postwar America is a time of rigid social rules. But when effervescent, seventeen-year-old Nora moves to Florida, she finds paradise—especially after she meets and wins over shy, brilliant Leonard. His mother is welcoming, but his father is suspicious of Nora and her lower-class family.
When coerced into breaking off all contact with Leonard, Nora makes a decision that exiles her from the family she loves, and sets off a chain of secrets and betrayals that will follow her for years.
Laura Moriarty’s Sunlight Finds You explores ideas about family, female desire, sexism, motherhood and prejudice. It’s about our capacity to forgive—ourselves and others—and about finding happiness by refusing to settle for a life that is less than full.
A compelling and warm-hearted love story for readers of Anne Patchett’s Tom Lake and Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye.
'Perfectly captures the joy and exquisite pain of first love, and the sacrifices that change our lives forever. I adored it.' Toni Jordan
‘The perfect summer read... Propulsive and drenched in light, just like the title.’ Jenna Bush Hager
‘The kind of book that makes you lean closer, then hold your breath as the beauty and betrayal unfold. I couldn’t stop reading. I couldn’t stop hoping. What an extraordinary novel!’ Ariel Lawhon
‘Radiant...What begins as a teenage romance in 1950s Florida becomes an intimate, deeply moving story of separation, sacrifice, and self-determination—and of how early love shapes the lives we carry forward.’ Christina Baker Kline
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A humble Missouri-born teen moves to St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1947 and falls into a star-crossed romance with a rich New Yorker in this twisty coming-of-age drama from Moriarty (The Chaperone). It was Nora Chesnow's stepmother, Mae, who suggested the family move to St. Pete, after her father remarried following her mother's sudden death from an aneurysm. Two years after their arrival, Nora, 17, becomes captivated by Leonard Lifton, a new classmate who frequents a country club and lives on a fancy island. They bond over George Orwell's Animal Farm and quickly become inseparable, but Leonard's father suspects Nora will trick Leonard into getting her pregnant. After a farcical misunderstanding, his parents forbid him from seeing her. Devastated, Leonard gives up his plan to go to college back north and joins the Army. He sees Nora during a visit to St. Pete, and she ends up pregnant after all. When Leonard is taken prisoner in Korea, Nora cannot reach him and is sent to a home for unwed mothers. After a shocking revelation, the third act barrels toward a conclusion that is by turns heartbreaking and heartwarming. Readers will fall for the delightful and well-rounded Nora and Leonard as much as they do for each other.
