Although they are half-sis­ters, Vivian Levy and Lucy Web­ster have led com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent lives. Vivian was raised in New York City with enor­mous priv­i­leges— pri­vate schools, sum­mer sleep away camps, tutors, lessons, and her col­lege tuition ful­ly paid. Her moth­er is a famous, though now floun­der­ing, author, and Vivian has worked hard to become the youngest som­me­li­er at one of the most pop­u­lar NYC restaurants. 

Lucy, raised by a sin­gle moth­er in a small town in Maine, still lives in that same small town, where she teach­es Eng­lish at her old high school and is mar­ried to her high school sweet­heart. While she had dreams of mov­ing to Port­land and start­ing a career in pub­lish­ing, life’s twists and turns land­ed her square­ly where she’s always been.

Born only six months apart, Vivian and Lucy have the same father but have nev­er met. While both spent a month at the lake each sum­mer with their father as kids, their paths nev­er crossed, and they were only vague­ly aware of each oth­er — until tragedy strikes, and the two women are forced to con­front each oth­er and some painful truths.

On the heels of learn­ing that her hus­band wants a divorce, Lucy escapes to the only oth­er place she’s known as home — her father’s cab­in on Fox Hill Lake. Vivian has also gone to Fox Hill Lake, but she’s there to spread his ash­es and sell their father’s beloved cab­in so that she can have mon­ey to start a busi­ness. When the two women encounter each oth­er face-to-face for the first time, things take a dras­tic turn when Vivian informs Lucy that not only is their father dead, but she plans to sell the lake house. Lucy is dev­as­tat­ed, and the rela­tion­ship between the two women only gets more tumul­tuous as they try to nav­i­gate many unknowns. Will a sum­mer of try­ing to under­stand each oth­er be enough to heal old wounds and for both women to find a path forward?

With a rich cast of sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, Maine Char­ac­ters trans­ports read­ers to sum­mer-time Maine — loons, blue­ber­ries, and sum­mer storms includ­ed. A per­fect read for fans of Car­ly Fortune’s Meet Me at the Lake, Orenstein’s nov­el is a time­less and heart­warm­ing nov­el infused with hon­esty, love, and com­pli­cat­ed dis­cov­er­ies about sis­ter­hood, self­hood, and what home real­ly means.