Mrs. Tree's Will
The reading of a will is never just about money. It's about what people remember, what they've hidden, and what they've loved. In this sequel to "Mrs. Tree," set a decade after the first installment in a small coastal Maine town at the turn of the century, the beloved matriarch has died and her neighbors have gathered in her parlor to learn how she saw them one last time. What follows is both poignant and sharply funny: legacies that reveal deep affection, others that reveal long-simmering grudges, and one particularly outraged niece who discovers that being related to a saint doesn't guarantee a fortune. Mr. Homer Hollopeter, Mrs. Tree's cousin, grapples with grief and the unexpected shape his own inheritance takes. Richards writes with the keen eye of a satirist and the warm heart of a local, capturing the way small towns hold their residents accountable to one another across generations. This is early American literary comedy at its finest: quietly devastating, gently hilarious, and utterly true to how we reveal ourselves only when there's something to leave behind.
