A Family Matter by Claire Lynch

A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK, as featured on TODAY. Some books announce themselves quietly, then refuse to let you go. This is one of them.

As The New York Times put it, this debut “burns like a sparkler, quick and mesmerizing.” We couldn’t agree more.

1982. Dawn is a young mother, still settling into married life, when Hazel walks in and lights up her world like a torch in the dark. Theirs is the kind of connection that’s impossible to resist—and suddenly life becomes more complicated, and more joyful, than Dawn ever imagined. But she has commitments. She has a daughter.

2022. Heron has just received news from his doctor that changes everything. An older man, settled into the comfortable rhythms of a quiet life, he can’t bear to tell Maggie, his only child. Just as he’s never been able to tell her the other secrets he’s carried for forty long years.

A Family Matter is an “intricately layered and infinitely nuanced” (Oprah Daily) story of love and loss, intimacy and injustice, custody and care. Barbara Kingsolver called it “quietly heart-scorching”—and that’s exactly the kind of book we love pressing into a reader’s hands.

It asks a question worth lingering over: can we ever truly heal the wounds of the past in the world we live in now?

Settle in with this one on a salty, rainy afternoon. Pour the tea. Let the floorboards creak. We have a feeling you won’t want to put it down.

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