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Alden
Warren is a Cape Cod year-rounder who works in the bookstore for the National Parks
Service and spends her spare time volunteering—keeping track of the local seagull
population and delivering Meals on Wheels to Hyram, a well-known activist known as the
Green Grandpa. Two years ago, her new husband, Monty, disappeared without warning.
Everyone in town knows that Monty wasn’t exactly faithful, and they’re all sure that
Monty just left with another woman. And while Alden been waiting for his return —
calling amnesia hotlines and watching true-crime shows to look for him ever since, what
she wants more than anything else is to become a foster parent, to love and care for a
child.
As she makes her way through a long line of men who help her
temporarily forget Monty, Alden meets Lux Davis, a landscape worker with a neurological
disorder and a past he’s trying to keep buried. Alden and Lux, share so much in
common—their dark, troubled past, their longing to find acceptance and perfect love—that
they’re powerfully (and maybe even irrationally) drawn together. But Lux’s dark secret
is in danger of being uncovered, and Alden’s despair and her desire to overcome her past
grow out of control.
At times dark and haunting, at others charged and
sensual, Lux has a feeling of desperation throughout. The mysterious, natural
setting of off-season Cape Cod only adds to the darkness and mystery surrounding the
dysfunctional characters, who tend to sometimes be a bit difficult to follow. Lux
is by no means a light, quick read, but you may find that the richly written setting
alone makes this melancholy novel worth your time.
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