Lost Souls at the Neptune Inn
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
When an elusive Southern stranger arrives in 1960s New Rochelle, three generations of women are forever changed.
When the heart finds its home, anything is possible. Geraldine, Emilia Mae, and Alice Wingo couldn't be more different from each other. Geraldine is a fiery beauty, turning heads while running the local bakery with her devoted husband, Earle-but she never quite takes to motherhood. Her daughter, Emilia Mae, spends her life chasing her mother's affection and goes looking for love in all the wrong places. So when she gives birth to her own daughter, Alice-the girl with the quick laugh and music running through her veins-she vows to do things differently. Then, Dillard Fox, a handsome stranger with a Southern drawl sails into town, bringing with him a gentle warmth that draws in all three of the Wingo women. Emilia Mae, never thinking she'd find true love, builds the kind of happy life with Dillard that neither of them ever expected. Geraldine slowly learns to be kinder to her difficult daughter, and young Alice may have found the father figure she always wanted. But everyone has their secrets, and the one that Dillard has been carrying all of these years threatens to upend their idyllic family. Over the course of their lives, these three women navigate their relationships with each other and the changing world around them. Filled with Carter's characteristic wit, this charming, wise novel is a paean to love-any way you can find it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carter (We Were Strangers Once) crafts an endearing, sweeping saga of strangers brought together. In three parts, spanning from 1929 to the early 1980s, Carter weaves the tangled web of her characters in fine, poetic detail. She begins in New Rochelle, N.Y., in 1929, with vain Geraldine Wingo, her dependable husband Earle, and their newborn girl, Emilia Mae. Geraldine never overcomes her fatigue from her colicky baby, whom she calls the devil child, and when Emilia turns 15, Geraldine sends her away to live and work as a charwoman at the nearby Neptune Inn. In the same year the Wingos had their baby girl, another couple in a remote Catskills lake town have a baby boy out of wedlock. Named Dillard Fox and raised by the father, Dillard matures into a good-looking, charming young man with musical talent who travels from job to job and town to town. In 1961, he meets the stoic Emilia Mae, now a single mother, and her bubbly nine-year-old daughter. Here, Carter connects the dots, unveiling a picture of an unconventional family made up of three generations of Wingos, their close friends, and Dillard, and the story comes alive through the honesty and raw emotion injected into the characters. Her unflinching look at the characters' imperfections and boundless exploration into their minds makes for an exceptional tale.
