In the coastal town of Rossignol, Maine, Mrs. Hippolyta Prymmer tends to her most treasured possession: a leather-bound death-book chronicling everyone she's ever lost. At seventy-one, she's compiled quite a catalog. When her wandering son Justin sweeps back into town with a shocking piece of news, a new wife, the formidable widow finds her orderly world upended. Derrice is modern, unbowed, and utterly unimpressed by Rossignol's gossiping millinery. What follows is a sharp, warm-hearted battle of wills between two very different women who may, against all odds, recognize something familiar in each other. Saunders writes with a novelist's eye for the absurd and a heart that refuses to be cynical about human folly.
