From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours, this sweeping family drama moves from modern-day Roanoke Island to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1930s, as stories recorded by Roosevelt’s WPA folklore writers intertwine with the present to create an unexpected destiny.

Whitney Monroe is fighting to save the restaurant she built from a hostile takeover when an unlikely inheritance from her mother—a decaying Gilded Age hotel on the Outer Banks—changes everything. The Excelsior may be her best, and perhaps only, chance to raise the money she needs. But the aging hotel holds more complications than Whitney ever imagined.

Her estranged stepfather has claimed the third floor as his refuge, while a determined group of tenants refuses to let the historic building fall into the hands of developers. As Whitney sorts through decades of forgotten family belongings in search of something valuable enough to save her business, she uncovers an old necklace and the traces of a Great Depression–era love story. Her search for a way forward soon becomes a journey into the past, where the stories of the women who came before her may hold the key to understanding her own family—and discovering what is truly worth saving.

• Beautiful and heartfelt with themes of family, forgiveness, and hope
• Southern women’s fiction that features clean, sweet romance
• Includes discussion questions for book clubs