Some secrets shatter you. Some summers transform you.

Every summer, it seems as if Cape June belongs to everyone but Edie Lane. It’s the town she’s always had to give up. But this year, for the first time in her life, she gets to stay. The Summer She Stayed is a lush novel about one intoxicating season in which the life one woman has always wanted finally feels within reach—until a reckoning with old-money privilege, long-buried truths, and a looming hurricane forces her to decide what she’s willing to risk to belong.

During Cape June’s shiniest season, Edie’s family has always rented out their shore house, surrendering their seaside hometown to wealthy vacationers. This year, everything changes. A family crisis sends the Lanes racing back to Cape June at summer's peak with nowhere to stay, putting Edie in close proximity to the man she recently had an affair with—Roger Knight, the handsome heir to the town’s most powerful family and namesake hotel. Edie is soon slipping between borrowed rooms at the Knight Hotel, pulled into the glittering circles she's always envied and forming a fast and potentially treacherous friendship with a glamorous guest. When news surfaces that a girl from Edie's past has gone missing—someone with ties to Roger Knight—Edie is swept into a dangerous current. As summer swells toward Roger's lavish Labor Day wedding, old secrets rise with the tides. But a storm is brewing. Torn between escape and reckoning, Edie must choose whether to confront the truth or leave it behind.