With sparkling wit and insight, this powerful new novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry reminds us that family is everything, even when it falls apart.

“It’s all here, dear readers. Art. Beauty. Pain. Redemption. A father who put his painting first, his romantic needs second, and his children wherever he could spackle them into the picture with a putty knife. There is scope and sweep, as the children attempt to sort it all out in the Italian heat by Lake Orta. Rachel Joyce’s masterful skill and emotional breadth are dazzling.”—Adriana Trigiani, author of The Good Left Undone

They had to stick together, his sisters said. They were family. They shared the same beginning. They were woven into the same story. But his sisters had no idea what was coming, or what Bella-Mae might do next.

There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family’s lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his long-awaited masterpiece.

Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting.

As the siblings try to piece together what happened, they spend the summer in a state of lawlessness: living under the same roof for the first time in decades, forced to confront the buried wounds they incurred as his children, and waiting for answers. Though they have always been close, the things they learn that summer—about themselves—and their father—will drive them apart before they can truly understand his legacy. Meanwhile, their stepmother’s enigmatic presence looms over the house. Is she the force that will finally destroy the family for good?

Wonderfully atmospheric, at heart this is a novel about the bonds of siblinghood—what happens when they splinter, and what it might take to reconnect them.