Family Baggage
A Novel
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2.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“An endearing and humane story about a family and its sticky web of secrets and misunderstandings . . . one of those rare books you could recommend to anyone and know that they’ll love it.”
–The Australian Women’s Weekly
Harriet Turner knows all about journeys. She’s arranged hundreds of them for her family’s travel agency. Now Harriet is joining her adopted sister, Lara, to lead a group through the Cornish countryside. But when Lara fails to appear at the airport as planned, Harriet finds herself in uncharted territory and suddenly alone with a busload of eccentric seniors. As the tour wends its way through the picturesque landscape, Harriet must uncover her sister’s whereabouts and confront long-held family secrets involving Lara’s arrival twenty-five years ago . . . not to mention keeping track of more baggage–real and emotional–than she ever expected.
BONUS: This edition contains excerpts from Monica McInerney's Lola's Secret, At Home with the Templetons, The Faraday Girls, The Alphabet Sisters, Greetings from Somewhere Else, and Upside Down Inside Out.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Turner Travel specializes in themed tours that take Merryn Bay, Australia, locals abroad. The natural deaths, two months apart, of patriarch and matriarch Neil and Penny Turner leave the family business in the hands of their three children, Harriet, James and Austin; foster daughter Lara; and a handful of family friends. The book opens as Harriet, still recovering from her mother's death, leads 12 tourists through the Cornwall countryside in the footsteps of British TV detective Willoughby, but flashes back to the family's past and various coping strategies: James hides behind his domineering wife, Melissa; Austin parties; Lara, taken in by the family under mysterious circumstances nearly 25 years earlier, is the model of efficiency. Meanwhile Lara, who was to aid Harriet on the Cornwall tour, has disappeared, and Patrick Shawcross, the actor who played Willoughby and who has been hired to accompany the tour has mistaken it for a where-are-they-now media opportunity. The mystery of Lara's family and Melissa's nefariousness come to light, and Harriet's love life heats up. McInerney (The Alphabet Sisters), who lives in Ireland, offers a light look at a complicated family.
