Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly.

Polly Wister has led a different kind of life than Agnes: that of a well-off married woman with children, defined by her devotion to her husband, a philosophy professor with an inflated sense of stature. She strives to create beauty and harmony in her home, in her friendships, and in her family. Polly soon finds her loyalties torn between the wishes of her best friend and the wishes of her three sons—but what is it that Polly wants herself?

Agnes’s designs are further muddied when an enterprising young book editor named Maud Silver sets out to convince Agnes to write her memoirs. Agnes’s resistance cannot prevent long-buried memories and secrets from coming to light with far-reaching repercussions for all.

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Alice Elliott Dark is the author the novels Fellowship Point and Think of England, as well as two collections of short stories, In the Gloaming and Naked to the Waist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry: Prize Stories, among others. Her award-winning story “In the Gloaming” was made into two films and was chosen for inclusion in Best American Stories of the Century. Dark is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is an associate professor at Rutgers-Newark in the MFA program.