A forbidden love blows open the world of a young woman, altering the trajectory of her life.
Postwar America is a time of rigid social rules. But when effervescent, seventeen-year-old Nora moves to Florida, she’s found paradise – especially after she meets and wins over shy, brilliant Leonard. His mother is welcoming, but his father is suspicious of Nora and her lower-class family.
When coerced into breaking off all contact with Leonard, Nora makes a decision that exiles her from the family she loves, and sets off a chain of secrets and betrayals that will follow her for years.
Laura Moriarty’s Sunlight Finds You is a compelling and warm-hearted love story that explores ideas about family, female desire, sexism, motherhood and prejudice. It’s about our capacity to forgive – ourselves and others – and about finding happiness by refusing to settle for a life that is less than full.
By the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Chaperone, this is an emotionally rich story whose characters you will care about deeply – for readers of Anne Patchett’s Tom Lake and Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye.
‘Radiant…What begins as a teenage romance in 1950s Florida becomes an intimate, deeply moving story of separation, sacrifice, and self-determination – and of how early love shapes the lives we carry forward.’
‘A cancel-your-plans, hold-your-breath, call-your-best-friend kind of book.’
‘Illuminates the beguiling power of first love through characters whose teenage choices precipitate lifelong consequences.’
‘Sunlight Finds You is a riveting story of young love and battered hope. It’s the kind of book that makes you lean closer, then hold your breath as the beauty and betrayal unfold. I couldn’t stop reading. I couldn’t stop hoping. What an extraordinary novel!’
‘Laura Moriarty writes with a voice that grabs you from the first page and delights you to the last. Sunlight Finds You is at once captivating, tender, and remarkably attuned to the emotional weather of our time. I love it.’