The Last Stitch of Summer
A Novel

About this book:

On a fog-shrouded island off the coast of Maine, textile restorer Maeve Penn uncovers a pristine 1950s wedding gown hidden in an attic trunk—wrapped in muslin, tied with her missing mother's signature knot, and pinned with a note in Eleanor's handwriting: *For when she comes back.* Eleanor Penn vanished without a trace twenty-two years ago, leaving behind a daughter who builds her life on the predictable logic of silk and thread, and a fiancé who mistakes stability for love. But the ice-blue satin dress pulls Maeve into a decades-old mystery: a young woman named Sarah who arrived on Spruce Island in 1958 with nothing but a trunk, fled before her wedding, and was erased from family memory.

As autumn gales close in, Maeve traces the delicate threads connecting Sarah's disappearance to her mother's obsession with the gown—and to the secrets Eleanor stitched into every garment she touched. With each layer of dust and lining she peels away, Maeve must decide whether some patterns are meant to be preserved or finally unraveled. *The Last Stitch of Summer* is a haunting, salt-winded novel about the weight of inheritance, the lies families tell to survive, and the courage it takes to cut the threads that bind us to the past.