The Sandpiper

One family’s story of ripping loss and painful secrets - and their search for redemption.

The Sandpiper is about the three Cameron women. Kate the perfect older sister. Jamie the screw-up. Their widowed mother Ellie. It’s about Nina Judd, their guardian angel, the novel’s heartbeat. Kate had the chance to know their father Dr. James. But Jamie was born too late. Sisters by birth. Sisters in loyalty sanctified by a blood oath. Two bright, pretty women full of promise. Then something happens the summer Jamie turns 18 that ruins everything. And maybe Kate’s not so perfect after all, Jamie not so hopeless. Embraced by The Sandpiper, Nina’s white-shingled cottage above the endless blue of Lake Michigan, the sisters struggle toward forgiveness, toward healing. That love is all there is Is all we know of love. -Emily Dickinson

Susan Brace Lovell earned undergraduate and graduate degrees with honors in English from the University of Michigan; taught high school and college English; co-founded Cadence, a weekly newspaper in East Grand Rapids, Michigan; has written FOUR non-fiction histories; serves as a consultant to The Wege Foundation; and sits on the Grand Rapids Salvation Army’s Advisory Board. She and her husband Dr. F. Raymer Lovell, Jr., have three children, six grandchildren, one naughty Cavalier spaniel named Lucky, and live in Grand Rapids.