Author(s): Marisa De Los Santos

General Fiction

In this, de los Santos' second novel, (Love Walked In, 2006) having moved out of New York City after the double whammy of a miscarriage and 9/11, Cornelia now finds herself a shunned outsider among the community's perfect blond matrons. Particularly unwelcoming is her tightly wound neighbour Piper, who is as sharp-tongued as she is judgmental about fashion, flowers and childrearing. Cornelia does begin a fledgling friendship with another newcomer, Lake, a waitress who has moved from California to enroll her genius 13-year-old son Dev in a special school after his previous school punished him for being too smart. Dev suspects there might be more to the move, that Lake may be moving them closer to the mystery father he's never met. As much as Cornelia likes Lake, she senses Lake holding back at crucial moments and responds in kind. Meanwhile, Piper turns out to be a far more complicated woman than she seems on the surface. She drops everything (but her children) to care for her best friend Elizabeth, who's in the last stages of cancer. By the time Cornelia succeeds in becoming pregnant, she and Piper have grown surprisingly close, each opening her heart a little to the other.