Cascade

Fans of Richard Russo, Amor Towles, Sebastian Barry, and Paula McLain will devour this transporting novel about the eternal tug between our duties and our desires, set during in New York City and New England during the Depression and New Deal eras.

            It’s 1935, and Desdemona Hart Spaulding has sacrificed her plans to work as an artist in New York to care for her bankrupt, ailing father in Cascade, Massachusetts. When he dies, Dez finds herself caught in a marriage of convenience, bound to the promise she made to save her father’s Shakespeare Theater, even as her town may be flooded to create a reservoir for Boston. When she falls for artist Jacob Solomon, she sees a chance to escape and realize her New York ambitions, but is it morally possible to set herself free?

Praise for CASCADE:

“Set during the Depression, Maryanne O’Hara’s luminous first novel centers on a woman torn between big-city dreams and life as a small-town wife and mother…Gorgeously written and involving, Cascade explores the age-old conflict between a woman’s perceived duty and her deepest desires, but in O’Hara’s skilled hands the struggle feels fresh and new.”—People Magazine, “People Pick”

“Cascade unfolds like a Shakespearean tragedy, with an ending you won’t see coming…[T]he novel becomes something that you can’t take your eyes from or stop

thinking about in wonder.”—Boston Globe

“When [Dez] falls in love with another man, an outsider and a Jew, and then a dead body turns up, the trouble escalates, and so will the rate at which you turn the pages. Cascade is perfect for sitting by the fire on a chilly day contemplating the immutability of things.”—Slate Magazine, “Best Books, 2012”

“Compelling and fascinating, the story unfolds in such unexpected ways, and with such gathering tension, that I couldn’t stop until I’d read the final, beautifully written, line.”—Kim Edwards, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and Lake of Dreams

“Maryanne O’Hara has created a splendid heroine…A lovely, intelligent and deeply satisfying novel.”—Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and Eva Moves the Furniture