The Conditions of Will

Georgia Carter has built a life in London as a professional lie detector and body-language expert, an ocean away from the wealthy South Carolina family she left behind. When her father, Will, dies, she returns to Okatie for the funeral — and to the estranged relatives she long ago wrote off, and the trauma she suffered there a decade earlier.

What should be a brief, bitter homecoming turns into a reckoning. Georgia is the family's black sheep alongside her gay, alcoholic brother, and the chasm between them and their unbending parents and older siblings runs deep. When Will's will reveals a startling bequest to a mysterious stranger, Georgia's talent for reading people becomes the key to unravelling a hidden chapter of her father's past. At the same time, she finds herself drawn to Sam Penny, her brother's AA sponsor — a complication she does not need.

Told in Georgia's sharp first-person voice, The Conditions of Will is an emotionally intense story about family loyalty, buried trauma, and the painful, uncertain work of healing when the people around you refuse to change.