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The Second Home

A Novel

Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available

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.
This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.

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.
"Christina Clancy writes with warmth, wit, and wisdom about fantastically human characters. A novel of family and place and belonging." Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Great Believers
"Christina Clancy writes with empathy and rich detail...Tender and suspenseful, Clancy's debut explores the nature of home as well as the nature of family itself—given and chosen." Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 23, 2020
      In Clancy’s florid, beach-ready debut, an inheritance dispute kicks up long-buried memories and secrets for a pair of sisters and their estranged adopted brother. Ann Gordon is in her mid-30s and dealing with the painful process of selling her family’s summerhouse in Wellfleet, Mass., after her parents’ death in a car accident. Unable to find a will, she tells what she assumes is a harmless lie, that besides her and her younger sister, Poppy, there are no other heirs to the title. Clancy then jumps back to when 17-year-old Ann arrives in Wellfleet for a summer, accompanied by Ann’s classmate and new addition to the Gordon family, Michael Davis, who has been adopted by the Gordons after losing his parents. Ann gets a job babysitting for the Shaw boys, their neighbors, and becomes entangled with the boys’ overbearing mother and their father, who has a wandering eye. By summer’s end, a rape and a miscarriage of justice set in motion a chain of events that will change the course of Ann and Michael’s lives. While the Shaw characters can be disappointingly flat in a way that borders on cartoonish, Clancy’s affectionate descriptions of Wellfleet are transporting. This is sure to be a favorite with book clubs.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Tavia Gilbert gives Ann and Poppy Gordon and their adopted brother, Michael, believable voices as they grow and change over 15 years. Ann is an overconfident 17-year-old until a life-changing summer at the family's Cape Cod vacation home ends with lies and secrets tearing the family apart. Fifteen years later, her parents have died, and her voice is full of anger and impatience as she tries to rush the sale of the house. Sister Poppy, still a free spirit chanting yoga mantras, comes home to try to recover what's left of her family. Michael grows from an insecure teen trying to please to a confident adult who stands up for his rights as he forces the siblings to face the past. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

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