An Old Chester Secret

Miss Lydia Sampson is the kind of woman who cannot keep a secret to save her life - which makes her an anomaly in the town of Old Chester, where everyone has something to hide. She meddles, she gossip, she tells your news before you've told it yourself. But when she abruptly leaves for Mercer, her neighbors are left speculating: what secret could possibly have driven her away? The answer arrives in the form of Mary Smith, a young woman with nowhere else to turn, who confides in Lydia about an unplanned pregnancy - a crisis that could destroy her in a world quick to judge. What follows is a quiet, devastating exploration of the distance between what we say and what we cannot say, between the secrets we keep and the compassion we owe. Deland writes with piercing insight into the small cruelties and unexpected mercies of provincial life, where everyone knows your name and everyone talks. The novel's power lies in its gentle accusation: we are all of us, in our own ways, failures at keeping the truths that matter.