RETURNING TO SHORE

Her mother's third marriage is only hours old when all hope for Clare's fifteenth summer fades. Before she knows it, Clare is whisked away to some ancient cottage on a tiny marsh island on Cape Cod to spend the summer with her father—a man she hasn't seen since she was three.

Clare's biological father barely talks, and when he does, he obsesses about endangered turtles. The first teenager Clare meets on the Cape confirms that her father is known as the town crazy person.

But there's something undeniably magical about the marsh and the island—a connection to Clare’s past that runs deeper than memory. Even her father's beloved turtles hold unexpected surprises. As Clare's father begins to reveal more about himself and his own struggle, Clare's summer becomes less of an exile and more of a return.

Corinne Demas is the author of two collections of short stories, three novels, a memoir, a collection of poetry, two plays, and numerous books for children. She is Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and a fiction editor of the Massachusetts Review. Before the year 2000, she published her books under the name Corinne Demas Bliss. Corinne grew up in New York City, in Stuyvesant Town, the subject of her memoir, "Eleven Stories High: Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town 1948-1968". She attended Hunter College High School, graduated from Tufts University, and completed a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She lived in Pittsburgh for a number of years, teaching at the University of Pittsburgh and at Chatham College. She lives with her family in Western Massachusetts and spends the summer on Cape Cod.