You Are the Love of My Life

It is 1973 and Watergate is on everyone’s lips. Lucy Painter is a children's book illustrator and a single mother of two. She leaves New York and the married father of her children to live in a tightly knit Washington neighborhood in the house where she grew up and where she discovered her father’s suicide. Lucy hopes for a fresh start, but her life is full of secrets: her children know nothing of her father’s death or the identity of their own father. As the new neighbors enter their insular lives, her family’s safety and stability become threatened.

From a writer whose “unique presentation of human experience makes reading a delight” (Elizabeth Strout), You Are the Love of My Life is a story of how shame leads to secrets, secrets to lies, and how lies stand in the way of human connection.

"Shreve explores the damaging ripple effect of secrets in her emotional and psychologically compelling newest (after The Lovely Shoes). Lucy Painter was 12 when she discovered her hanged father in their house in Washington, D.C. His suicide instilled in Lucy an abiding shame, and became the root of her reclusiveness and belief in 'necessary' lies. Later, Lucy becomes a successful children's book illustrator and a single mother, but keeps the father's identity hidden from her children, preteen Maggie and young Felix because he is a married man. In 1973, Lucy and her kids move from New York back to Lucy's childhood home, where she struggles with intrusive neighbors, especially the headstrong Zee Mallory. To Lucy's increasing chagrin, Zee begins 'appropriating' Maggie, who is hurt by her mother's emotional reticence. Only when Lucy realizes that she may lose her daughter does she summon the courage to reveal her past. Shreve has an authoritative command of narrative, and she portrays the younger characters with insight and pitch-perfect dialogue, crafting a message of transparency and acceptance that resonates beyond the home." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

For fans of Sue Miller, a finely wrought novel of family secrets and the desire for sustaining love.

“Spare, elegant and absolutely riveting. . . . Cancel those dinner plans—you’ll want to keep reading.”—Joanna Powell, People

It is 1973 and Watergate is on everyone’s lips. Lucy Painter is a children's book illustrator and a single mother of two. She leaves New York and the married father of her children to live in a tightly knit Washington neighborhood in the house where she grew up and where she discovered her father’s suicide. Lucy hopes for a fresh start, but her life is full of secrets: her children know nothing of her father’s death or the identity of their own father. As the new neighbors enter their insular lives, her family’s safety and stability become threatened.

From a writer whose “unique presentation of human experience makes reading a delight” (Elizabeth Strout), You Are the Love of My Life is a story of how shame leads to secrets, secrets to lies, and how lies stand in the way of human connection.

Susan Richards Shreve is the author of fourteen novels, a memoir, and twenty-nine books for children. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment grant and is cochairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She lives in Washington, DC.