Every gossipy old lady in Wellfleet will tell you that a pregnant woman had three choices back then:

1. Keep the baby.

2. Call the stork.

3. Have a secret procedure.

And in Wellfleet, if you can’t keep a secret, start a fire. . .

When Mary Newcombe returns to Cape Cod to track down her birth mother once and for all, a suspicious fire erupts in the old health clinic, sending the town into a tizzy when the Old Ladies Gossip Militia blabs about what respectable women did about their unwanted pregnancies back then - like - sneak the baby off to a distant relative - or get an illegal abortion before the husband finds out.

Mary can’t remember the clinic’s hell-fire on Christmas night (too much eggnog) and, as always, her mother isn’t talking. Birdie has kept secrets from Mary her entire life, beginning with the truth about Mary’s birth mother. When Mary discovers her adoptive father socked away a small fortune performing pre-Roe v. Wade illegal abortions in the clinic that burned to the ground, she’s done with being kept in the dark. As the days tick by, pressure mounts to find the arsonist, as all arrows begin to point to Mary who is a legal pyromaniac - a potter - who loves the power of fire. Meanwhile, Mary’s cousin Jimmy is acting strangely and suddenly, so is her son. As the FBI zeros in on Mary, another fire burns in the harbor, forcing Mary and Birdie to face a long-brewing reckoning.

Wellfleet’s people:

Old Ladies Gossip Militia

Drug-thief nurse

Sex-crazed abortion doctor

Fishermen Oxycodone smugglers

Jamaican kingpin banker

Potter and her Chihuahua cremation urns

Very tall chef with fish-gutting fingernail

Waitress who spites pushy tourists with dirty forks

Chief of police with a red lollipop habit

 "Set against the backdrop of a small Cape Cod town, Stiles's novel beautifully tackles abortion, adoption, and the mystery of a sudden fire that acts as connective tissue to all the town's denizens. A gripping page turner about the secrets we hand down through the generations told in four blazingly original female voices."

-Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Days of Wonder

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book is 100% fiction peppered with the truth about this and that. For the record, I, Judith Newcomb Stiles, am an e-dropper along with the other good-citizen Newcombs who long ago dropped the “e” at the end of their names to differentiate themselves from the Naughty Newcombes who kept the ignominious “e”.