The Cliffs

On the Maine coast, a lavender Victorian house with gingerbread trim sits on a secluded bluff, abandoned for decades with clothes still hanging in the closets. Jane Flanagan finds it as a teenager and uses it to hide from her volatile mother. Two decades on, working as an archivist at Harvard, she comes back to Maine after a terrible mistake puts her career and marriage at risk, and discovers the house gutted by Genevieve, the summer visitor from Beacon Hill who now owns it. Genevieve believes the place is haunted and hires Jane to research its history and the women who lived there. J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and Strangers, built the novel around family, ghosts and homecoming.

Reese Witherspoon chose it for Reese's Book Club in July 2024.