Husbands & Lovers
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 25, 2024
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by an exotic family heirloom—reclaim secrets and lost loves in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.
“My favorite kind of page-turner—unputdownable!”—Martha Hall Kelly, author of The Golden Doves
New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams— one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.
Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.
Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the engrossing latest from Williams (The Beach at Summerly), a single mother reconnects with her son's father and learns the troubling story of her mother's adoption. In the present day, Mallory Dunne's 13-year-old son, Sam, needs a kidney transplant. Three years earlier, Sam's kidneys were damaged after he ate poisonous mushrooms at a summer camp. Paige, Mallory's sister, suggests Mallory contact her ex-boyfriend Monk Adams, now a world-famous Grammy-winning singer, who may be Sam's father, to determine if he's a potential donor match. In a parallel narrative set in 1951 Cairo, Hannah Ainsworth, wife of aging British diplomat Alistair Ainsworth, embarks on an affair with Lucien Beck, a handsome assistant hotel manager. After Hannah gets pregnant, Alistair forces her to give up the baby for adoption at an Irish orphanage. Back in the present, Mallory briefs Monk about Sam, and their rekindled friendship causes him to recognize the flaws in his relationship with the woman he plans to marry. Hannah's and Mallory's parallel stories of unexpected pregnancy and painful decisions converge in a cathartic scene in Ireland, where Mallory and Paige travel to visit the orphanage where their deceased mother was sent, connecting their story to Hannah's in a way that is unsurprising but moving. Historical fiction fans will be riveted.
