The summer girls

Marietta Muir, known to her family as Mamaw, owns Sea Breeze, the historic summer home of the Muirs on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. Her three granddaughters, half sisters now living far apart, loved their holidays there as girls but have stayed away for years. Marietta fears the family will drift apart once she is gone.

The Muirs are one of Charleston's oldest families, and they claim a pirate captain among their ancestors. Marietta uses that legacy as bait, hinting at pearl necklaces, valuable antiques and even the house itself to bring her "summer girls" back to the lowcountry for three months.

Carson Muir arrives first. She has spent years without putting down roots, sure of only one thing: she cannot live far from the ocean. Broke and directionless in California, she goes back to Sea Breeze wondering where her life went off course. There the sea gives her an unexpected bond with a dolphin.

That bond helps Carson mend her ties with her sisters and face painful memories of her father, whose life ended badly. Her story opens a trilogy about the three sisters. It is a family novel with a coastal setting, a gentle pace and a hopeful tone, in which old secrets surface and old mistakes are forgiven over a single summer.