The Invisible Husband of Frick Island
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
“This is the hopeful book we all need right now. I loved it!”—Emily Giffin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lies That Bind
As Seen on the TODAY SHOW
A Southern Living Best Beach Read * A PopSugar Best Book of May * An Us Weekly Summer Beach Staple * A Frolic Under-the-Radar Book of May * An OK Magazine Best Summer Beach Read * An EW.com Best Book of Spring * A Country Living Can't Miss Beach Read * A LibraryReads Pick for May * An Emily Giffin Book Club pick
Sometimes all you need is one person to really see you.
Piper Parrish's life on Frick Island—a tiny, remote town smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay—is nearly perfect. Well, aside from one pesky detail: Her darling husband, Tom, is dead. When Tom's crab boat capsized and his body wasn't recovered, Piper, rocked to the core, did a most peculiar thing: carried on as if her husband was not only still alive, but right there beside her, cooking him breakfast, walking him to the docks each morning, meeting him for their standard Friday night dinner date at the One-Eyed Crab. And what were the townspeople to do but go along with their beloved widowed Piper?
Anders Caldwell’s career is not going well. A young ambitious journalist, he’d rather hoped he’d be a national award-winning podcaster by now, rather than writing fluff pieces for a small town newspaper. But when he gets an assignment to travel to the remote Frick Island and cover their boring annual Cake Walk fundraiser, he stumbles upon a much more fascinating tale: an entire town pretending to see and interact with a man who does not actually exist. Determined it’s the career-making story he’s been needing for his podcast, Anders returns to the island to begin covert research and spend more time with the enigmatic Piper—but he has no idea out of all the lives he’s about to upend, it’s his that will change the most.
USA Today bestselling author Colleen Oakley delivers an unforgettable love story about an eccentric community, a grieving widow, and an outsider who slowly learns that sometimes faith is more important than the facts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the quirky latest from Oakley (You Were There Too), an outsider learns of strange happenings on a remote Maryland island. After Tom Parrish is presumed dead in a boating accident, his wife, Piper, stays on the three-mile strip of Frick Island, still walking the docks with an imagined version of Tom to chat with the other boatmen and eat dinner at the One-Eyed Crab. Journalist Anders Caldwell arrives to do a fluff piece on the annual Cake Walk celebration, and afterward receives an email from an anonymous source saying he's missed the bigger story. He returns, assuming the tip was about climate change, only to learn how the other islanders play along with Piper's "PBHEs" (post-bereavement hallucination experiences). He then secretly dedicates his flailing podcast to Piper's "invisible husband" and her neighbors' role in the charade. As the podcast begins to catch on, Anders races against the building of a new cell tower, which would bring data service to the island along with news of the now successful podcast, which is actually about them. Granted, much of the plot relies on coincidences and silly misunderstandings, but Oakley cultivates a genuine sense of hope and the outlandish things people do to support the ones they love. There's little of consequence here, but it works as a light diversion.
