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Wednesday, June 26, 2024

A Happier Life

The renovation of an old family house in North Carolina reveals discoveries about the past and encourages a young woman at a crossroads in the present to make a fresh start in life. 

Author Kristy Woodson Harvey has built a brand writing tender, heartfelt stories that showcase Southern flair, smalltown life, and the bonds of family and friendship. In A Happier Life, she adds to her growing body of work, offering readers a poignant story about one contemporary woman and one woman from the past, both facing change in their lives.

 

The book launches with 30-something, Keaton Smith. She is Southern woman transplanted to a high-powered job working for a New York City “lifestyle brand” company. On the same day Keaton gets dumped from her job and by her beau, she’s asked by her mother to clear out the house her mother grew up in--a home Keaton didn’t know was still in the family--in Beaufort, North Carolina.

 

Keaton is reluctant. However, being at a crossroads and with time on her hands, she takes on the task. When she steps into the 254-year-old house, she finds it has been left eerily untouched--complete with rotary telephone--since the night her grandparents died unexpectedly in a tragic car accident in August 1976.

 

As Keaton settles in and begins to assess the home, she starts to assemble pieces, like a puzzle, of her grandparents’ lives. Did they really die by accident? Or could there be more to the story? Keaton becomes more greatly intrigued when she starts to read her grandmother’s journal. It further encourages Keaton in her determination to find answers. She mingles with the locals and even strikes up a relationship with a young father who lives with his son next door.

 

What ensues is a captivating, heartwarming story that combines a long-lost family saga with elements of mystery and romance. Readers will be riveted and wowed by Woodsen’s (The Summer of Songbirds, The Wedding Veil) 12th winning novel.

 

 

A Happier Life by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Gallery Books (Simon and Schuster), $28.99 hardcover, 9781668012192, 384 pages

Publication Date: June 25, 2024

To order this book on Bookshop/INDIEBOUND, link HERE