A picturesque Maine beach town is the setting for Holly
Chamberlin’s touching and thought-provoking new novel, as a
mother struggles to reconnect with her long lost daughter...
Every year on March 26th, Verity Peterson visits Ogunquit
Beach, where she puts a handwritten message into a bottle
and launches it into the waves. It’s a ritual of remembrance
for the daughter she hasn’t seen in sixteen years—not since
her baby’s father, Alan, took two-month-old Gemma and
disappeared. Verity keeps searching and hoping, sustained by
the thought that someday she might get to be a mother to her
own child. And finally, one phone call may change everything…
Verity learns that Alan is now in jail on abduction
charges—and Marni Armstrong, born Gemma Peterson-Burns, is
coming to live with Verity in Yorktide, Maine. But this
isn’t the joyful reunion Verity imagined. Gemma has been
raised to believe Verity was an unfit mother who left Alan
no choice but to take her out of harm’s way. Over the course
of one summer, Verity tries to reach a tough, wary young
woman who’s more stranger than daughter. And Gemma must
reexamine everything she thought about her parents—and
decide whether to trust in a relationship that, though
delicate as a seashell on the surface, could prove to be
just as beautiful and resilient.