"It's the sea, they said in high, bright voices. Come on, honey, the sea. Pebbles shifted under her toes. Slippery. Cold. The ground gave way. She stumbled and fell. Mommy! Daddy! She heard them, miles above her, laughing. She tried to stand, but an unexpected wave slammed into her, glassy and green, determined."

For the Connelly family, life was beyond perfect. Ruth was a successful corporate lawyer for a prestigious Boston law firm, her husband Paul was a well-respected professor working at two colleges, who wrote in his spare time. They had two lovely children: Sixteen-year-old Josephine, known as Josie, and fourteen-year-old William. And every summer was spent at the family's summerhouse, the place where generations of Ruth's family had reveled in the beauty of the Maine coast.

It was certainly a place to make enough memories to last a lifetime. Yet, almost without her realizing it, everything is slowly disintegrating. This summer, there is apparently no escape from the tension that has surfaced between herself and her troubled daughter, Josie. That tension has begun to spread into her and Paul's relationship as well, adding strain to a once rock-solid marriage.

When a long-promised sailing trip to celebrate Will's birthday turns tragic, his idyllic birthday treat suddenly turns into a family nightmare. Trapped by such a tragedy, mired in her own personal destructive spiral of guilt and denial, Ruth knows only the darkness of her own loss and grief. It is only when she finally finds the courage to return to Maine and confront her conflicting emotions, that Ruth begins to understand that sometimes the greatest and deepest pain is inflicted on those we love the most.

Susan Madison is a new author to me and this is actually the first book of hers that I've ever read. I certainly enjoyed this book very much - it was interesting and fast-paced, and I would love to be able to read more of Ms. Madison's work in the future. However, I found the plot to be just the slightest bit far-fetched and somewhat implausible. However, I would still give this book an A! ( )