A forthright woman disrupts the social order of upper crust New England in this Pulitzer Prize–winning family saga.
Tracing their lineage back to its colonial founders, the Pentland family of Durham, Massachusetts, is committed to preserving the “old ways.” But time has its own way of moving restlessly forward. Patriarch John Pentland never understood why his niece Sabine married a man so beneath them. Now, after escaping to Europe twenty years ago, the black sheep has returned. And she’s determined to present her eighteen-year-old daughter to society.
Sabine Callendar is not the humble, broken creature the Pentlands expected. In fact, she has no trouble holding them accountable, skewering the hypocrisies of a society that once tormented her. As long-held secrets come to light the Pentlands, and the legacy of their name, will be changed forever