The Second Home
Teens Ann and Poppy are excited to welcome their adoptive brother, Michael, to the family’s summer home on Cape Cod. After his mother’s death, Michael was thrilled to join the Gordon family, despite his non-brotherly feelings for Ann. But a disastrous summer pulls Michael from the family forever, until their parents’ sudden death fifteen years later.
The three are reunited at the summer home to determine its fate. Bitterness and secrets from the past remain, and they are left to untangle what happened then and how they will move forward–as a family or not.
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Publisher’s Description
Tender and compassionate, incisive and heartbreaking, Christina Clancy’s The Second Home is the story of a family you’ll quickly fall in love with, and won’t soon forget. After a disastrous summer spent at her family summer home on Cape Cod, seventeen-year-old Ann Gordon was left with a secret that changed her life forever, and created a rift between her sister, Poppy, and their adopted brother, Michael.
Now, fifteen years later, her parents have died, leaving Ann and Poppy to decide the fate of the Wellfleet home that’s been in the Gordon family for generations. For Ann, the once-beloved house is tainted with bad memories. Poppy loves the old saltbox, but after years spent chasing waves around the world, she isn’t sure she knows how to stay in one place. Just when the sisters decide to sell, Michael re-enters their lives with a legitimate claim to the house. But more than that, he wants to set the record straight about that long ago summer.
Reunited after years apart, these very different siblings must decide if they can continue to be a family—and the house just might be the glue that holds them together. Told through the shifting perspectives of Ann, Poppy, and Michael, this assured and affecting debut captures the ache of nostalgia for summers past and the powerful draw of the places we return to again and again. It is about second homes, second families, and second chances.