What happens when a woman who has spent forty years being dutiful decides she’s done surviving—and starts living dangerously instead?

Set against the icy beauty of a Massachusetts beach town in winter, this novel is a sharp, darkly funny, emotionally charged story about marriage, betrayal, grief, desire, and reinvention at the exact moment life is supposed to be winding down. Viola arrives to bury her mother and settle an estate. Instead, she uncovers a devastating secret linking her mother and her husband, Anthony—a lie that has shaped her entire adult life.

Fueled by rage, heartbreak, and a long-buried hunger for freedom, Viola begins sabotaging the version of herself everyone expects. She plunges into the freezing Atlantic with her outrageous best friend Jackie, becomes obsessed with the stranger who rescues her, battles with her dead mother’s ghost, and watches as a violent nor’easter threatens to destroy the fragile house—and identity—she’s trying to rebuild.

At once wickedly witty and deeply moving, this is a story for anyone who has ever wondered whether it’s too late to change their life, reclaim their body, or choose themselves over obligation. Readers will find a fearless heroine navigating late midlife reckoning with humor, sensuality, and fury, wrapped inside a page-turning mystery and storm-lashed coastal drama.