Violet Figg and her sister Trudy have lived a quiet life in Sugar Bend, Alabama, since a night forty years ago that stole Trudy’s voice and cemented Violet’s role as her sister’s fierce and loyal protector. Now Trudy spends her days making sculptures from found objects and speaking through notes written on scraps of paper, while Violet runs their art shop, monitors bird activity up and down the water, and tries not to think of the one great love she gave up to keep her sister safe.

Eighteen-year-old Maya knows where everyone else belongs, but she’s been searching for her own place since her grandmother died seven years ago. Moving in and out of strangers’ houses has left her exhausted. After seeing a flyer on a gas station window for a place called Sugar Bend, Maya chooses to follow the strange pull she feels and finds herself on the doorstep of an art shop called Two Sisters.

When a boat rises to the surface of Little River in the middle of the night, the present and no-longer-buried past collide, and the future becomes uncertain for Maya, Violet, and Trudy. As history creeps continuously closer to the present and old secrets come to light, the sisters must decide to face the truth of what happened that night forty years ago, or risk losing each other and those they’ve come to love.

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Published: October 2022