When it comes to making the biggest decision of your life, what matters more: the events of one epic day or the events of a lifetime--though could that day have even happened without the lifetime leading up to it? Elle Bishop has spent every summer of her 50 years at her family's compound on Cape Cod, in the Back Woods. Ramshackle and in a constant losing battle with the elements, the beach retreat is a reassuring constant in Elle's life, which has otherwise been marked by her parents' divorce, a series of increasingly inappropriate parental mates, gruesome stepsiblings, and interactions with lecherous and violent men and boys. Jonas, a childhood friend of Elle's from the Cape, served as another constant during her challenging upbringing. Elle's day of reckoning is prompted by a sexual encounter with him--just outside a dinner party with both of their spouses in attendance--after years of a slow-burn relationship. Elle's marriage to a man she truly loves (and the comfortable family life they've made together) is balanced against the secret-filled history she and Jonas share. Over the course of the ensuing hours, Elle narrates her day of introspection and intersperses it with flashbacks spanning the course of her whole life, with and without Jonas. The moody and atmospheric setting of the shadowy paths and ponds of the Back Woods is described in lush detail that makes a sharp contrast to the colder, sharper elements of Elle's story. But the long-held secrets that Elle reveals and reckons with over the course of her day of decision cast the biggest shadow over her life and will inform the rest of her days. From the first pages of her debut novel, Heller pulls no punches. Some of them just sneak up on you later on. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Heller's captivating debut, a woman's visit to her family's summer home on Cape Cod forces her to make a momentous decision. Elle Bishop, 50, and her family are back at the "Paper Palace," nicknamed for the cheap pressed paperboard their grandfather used in constructing the house. Elle continues to go there each summer despite painful memories, beginning after her parents split when she was 10 and her mother started bringing along a new boyfriend and his children, including his menacing 11-year-old son, Conrad. As the novel opens, Elle's finally consummated her feelings for Jonas, a friend from the Cape whom she's loved since she was a girl. Over the next 24 hours she must make the decision to stay with her husband, Peter, or finally be with Jonas. Woven throughout are flashbacks from Elle's childhood, including a horrific series of events over the summer of 1983 when Elle was 13, involving Conrad, Elle, and Jonas, as well as other family traumas that have reverberated through generations. When the details are revealed later on, they put the somber mood of the first half in a new light. While the story takes a while to get going, Heller's prose is full of lush atmospheric details. This will keep the reader guessing all the way to the end. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners. (July)

Elle has spent almost every summer of her life in her family's run-down summer cottages in the backwoods of Cape Cod. Most of her childhood summers were spent playing alongside Jonas, a neighbor a few years Elle's junior who shared her adventurous spirit. Now Elle is 50 years old and married with three children, but she can't shake the memory of a traumatic incident that took place one long-ago summer, an incident that changed her once-innocent friendship with Jonas. Years of sexual tension have built between Elle and Jonas, and a passionate encounter threatens to destroy the life that Elle has carefully built, as well as reveal the childhood secrets that Elle has kept from her husband and her mother. Heller's debut novel juxtaposes present-day events with extensive flashbacks to Elle's past, revealing a long-hidden family legacy of devastating abuse. It's a dark, moody, propulsive story, a love triangle decades in the making, with far-reaching implications for every character in the book. Fans of dysfunctional family sagas will fly through the pages, eager to know what happens next.