The Paper Palace

It is a perfect August morning on Cape Cod and Elle, a fifty-year-old mother of three, wakes at The Paper Palace, the family summer place she has visited every year of her life. The night before, she and her oldest friend Jonas slipped out the back door and had sex for the first time while their spouses chatted inside, and that single act forces a reckoning. Over the next twenty-four hours Elle must decide between the life she has built with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she imagined with Jonas before a tragic event changed everything. The narrative traces the choices and histories that lead to this moment, including tensions of desire and dignity, legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.