June Baby
Represented by Stephanie Cabot
June Baby is a gorgeous, lyrical love letter to women, exploring what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a lover, and a friend. It meditates on our inchoate yearning to find a life of purpose while not yet knowing what that means, and inspects which people and memories we get to hold onto in life and which we must let go of in order to move forward.
At seventeen, Ruth’s mother has just died of cancer, and her father, unable to handle her grief, has shipped her off to Block Island with nothing but the name of a woman—Diana Beckett—scribbled on the back of a McDonald’s receipt. Diana is a successful photographer and she takes Ruth in for the summer and quickly becomes a second mother figure to her, introducing Ruth to art, creativity, the natural world and, in the form of Diana’s nephew, Charlie, first love. The island becomes Ruth’s refuge from a world she has trouble navigating.
For the next ten years Ruth lives for the summers on Block Island working as Diana’s assistant. She lives the rest of year in temporary apartments, waiting tables, checking engine lights, shells found in pockets, just scraping by until she can get back to the island each June.
After Diana dies and Ruth’s world starts to slip again. Looking for an anchor, she reaches for the person she’s been pining for since she met him—Charlie. But the day Ruth is going to finally tell Charlie how she feels, he announces that he is engaged. The wedding is in six weeks. And after a drunken one night stand with Louis, an old island flame, Ruth believes her birth control has failed, filling her with the fear of an unplanned pregnancy.
As the wedding approaches, Charlie and Ruth’s shared history continues to pull them together, and during a secret beach day when his fianceé is out of town, Charlie presents Ruth with a box from Diana. The contents in the box raise questions about how well Ruth really knew the two women who raised her. Ruth will confront her grief to break free.
Reviews
“June Baby has everything I want in a beach read: juicy romance, explosive family secrets, and a delicious island setting. Shannon Garvey has delivered the book of the summer!” —Elin Hilderbrand, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Five-Star Weekend
“Amid white sand dunes and star-kissed nights, Shannon Garvey’s tender debut aches with longing as it explores how sometimes the idea of love can outlast love itself. With prose as resonant as a ship’s bell and twists that will keep you on the edge of your beach towel, June Baby is a layered, hopeful meditation on grief, second chances, and the home found within each of us . . . A sun-splashed, thought-provoking holiday between two covers.”—Emma Brodie, author of Songs in Ursa Major
“This absorbing novel is a real find. Shannon Garvey is a writer of depth and vivid detail, and I was swept away by this story of Ruth’s breathless summer of decision. This is an honest examination of the choices a young woman faces—of love, friendship, and vocation—that feels fresh and alive.”—Judy Blundell, author of The High Season
“A sun-drenched novel of love, tragedy, beauty, and creativity, June Baby is a glittering debut novel from an exciting new voice.”—Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street
“What a treat to get lost in the sharply drawn, salt-washed world of June Baby. This is a novel about grief, first love, and the slow, uncertain work of growing up. Garvey’s prose is tender and precise, and her debut reveals a writer of real emotional intelligence and depth.”—Coco Mellors, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Sisters
“From its opening pages, June Baby transports readers to the wind-swept dunes and watercolor skies of Block Island — and the quiet, impossible decisions we face in our twenties. Through gorgeous prose, heat, and an unflinching lens, Shannon Garvey explores the choices we do and don’t get to make as we navigate loss and opportunity. A shimmering debut about the agony and thrill of growing up, June Baby is a dazzler.” —Beck Dorey-Stein, author of Spectacular Things
“June Baby is the kind of gorgeous book that carries us back to the sharp sweet days of longing and late sunlight, summer days that are always more than themselves, where we grow to become the people we are now. Absorbing and moving, I loved every second of my time with Ruth here on the island—a world of salt and sorrow, and of immeasurable love.” —Sarah Blake, bestselling author of The Postmistress