A beautiful young woman. An American soldier. A war-torn country. Nearly forty years of silence.

Now, two daughters search for the truth they hope will set them free and the elusive peace their parents have never found.

In the South Carolina Lowcountry, a young mother named Katherine Ann is struggling to help her tempestuous father by plunging into a world of secrets he never talks about. A fry cook named Lisa is trying desperately to reach her grieving Vietnamese mother who has never fully adjusted to life in the States. And somewhere far away, a lost soul named Ernest is drifting, treading water, searching for what he lost on a long-ago mountain.

They're all yearning for connection. For the war that touched them to finally end. For their hundred years of happiness at long last to begin.

From the beloved author of "The Spirit of Sweetgrass" and "Trouble the Water" comes this generous story of family, war, loss, and longing . . . of the ways we hide from those we love, and the ways that love finds us anyway.

A moving novel of unconditional love and the freedom of letting go, this story follows the haunting journey of a single mother from South Carolina who discovers she's pregnant again. When single mother Priscilla Lynn Macy learns she's having another child unexpectedly, she packs the family into the car to escape. Eight-year-old Janie Doe and Rainey Dae, her seventeen-year-old sister with special needs, embark on the last family vacation they'll ever take with Poppy and Grandma Mona in the back seat. The trip seems aimless until Janie realizes they are searching for the father who left them years ago. When they can't find him, they make their way to Forest Pines, SC. Priscilla hasn't been to her family home in many years and finds it a mixed blessing of hope, buried secrets, and family ghosts. Through eyes of innocence, Janie learns the hard realities of life and the difficult choices grownups make. And she must face disturbing truths about the people she loves in order to carry them in the moments that matter most. Part road trip, part mystery, and completely unexpected, Saving Cicadas picks you up in one place and puts you down someplace else entirely. It's an eloquent reminder that life is a miracle-and even the smallest soul is a gift. Haunting contemporary southern fiction Includes discussion questions for book clubs Also by Nicole Seitz: The Inheritance of Beauty, A Hundred Years of Happiness, and Trouble the Water

Beauty, like truth, is enduring. But only one can set you free. The Inheritance of Beauty is a rich and enchanting story about 92-year-old George, forced to watch his beloved wife Maggie fade from Alzheimer's-until a stranger arrives at their nursing home to bring the tragic past crashing back. Maggie Black came of age in the lush, fragrant lowcountry of South Carolina-spending her days with her beloved brother and the childhood sweetheart she would grow up to marry. But when a stranger arrived on the train one summer, Maggie couldn't imagine the evil he would bring with him. And though she escaped with her life, the ramifications of that fateful summer would alter all of their lives forever. Now, some eighty years later, Maggie and her husband George are spending their remaining days in a nursing home, helpless as age slowly robs Maggie of her ability to communicate. When a mysterious package arrives, followed closely by a stranger whose identity haunts them, Maggie and George are hemmed in by a history they'd rather forget. As the truth reveals itself, George knows he must face the past and its lifetime of repercussions. It's the only way to free himself and his precious wife-if it's not too late. But George isn't sure how many lives were affected by the stranger in Levy . . . or why life must come full-circle now when he's running out of time Haunting southern fiction told through alternating points of view in the present and 1929 Includes discussion questions for book clubs Also by Nicole Seitz: Saving Cicadas, A Hundred Years of Happiness, and Trouble the Water

Set in the South Carolina Sea Islands, Nicole Seitz's second novel follows the stories of two sisters. One is seeking to recreate her life yet again and learns to truly live from a group of Gullah nannies she meets on the island. The other thinks she's got it all together until her sister's imminent death from cancer causes her to re-examine her own life and seek the healing and rebirth her troubled sister managed to find on St. Anne's Island.

An entrancing, unsettling story of sisterhood and sea changes, healing grace and unlikely angels. A tragic, hilarious, hope-filled novel about the art of starting over.

Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins is a 78-year-old sweetgrass basket weaver who sits on the side of Hwy. 17 in the company of her dead husband, Daddy Jim. Inspired by her Auntie Leona, Essie Mae finally discovers her calling in life and weaves powerful "love baskets," praying fervently over them to affect the lives of those who visit her roadside stand. When she's faced with losing her home and her stand and being put in a nursing home, Daddy Jim talks her into coming on up to Heaven to meet sweet Jesus-something she's always wanted to do. Once there, she reunites with Gullahs and African ancestors; but soon, her heavenly peace is disrupted, for she still has work to do. Now Essie Mae, who once felt powerless and invisible, must find the strength within her to keep her South Carolina family from falling apart.

New York Times best-selling writer Pat Conroy (1945-2016) inspired a worldwide legion of devoted fans numbering in the millions, but none are more loyal to him and more committed to sustaining his literary legacy than the many writers he nurtured over the course of his fifty-year writing life. In sharing their stories of Conroy, his fellow writers honor his memory and advance our shared understanding of his lasting impact on twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary life in and well beyond the American South. Conroy's was a messy fellowship of people from all walks of life. His relationships were complicated, and people and places he thought he'd left behind often circled back to him at crucial moments. The pantheon of contributors includes Pulitzer Prize winners Rick Bragg and Kathleen Parker; Grammy winners Barbra Streisand and Janis Ian; Lillian Smith Award winners Anthony Grooms and Mary Hood; National Book Award winner Nikky Finney; James Beard Foundation Award winners Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart; a corps of New York Times best-selling authors, including Ron Rash, Sandra Brown, and Mary Alice Monroe; Conroy biographers Katherine Clark and Catherine Seltzer; longtime Conroy friends Bernie Schein, Cliff Graubart, John Warley, and Walter Edgar; Pat's students Sallie Ann Robinson and Valerie Sayers; members of the Conroy family; and many more. Each author in this collection shares a slightly different view of Conroy. Through their voices, a vibrant, multifaceted portrait of him comes to life and sheds new light on the writer and the man. Loosely following Conroy's own chronology, the essays in Our Prince of Scribes wind through his river of a story, stopping at important ports of call. Cities he called home and longed to visit, along with each book he birthed, become characters that are as equally important as the people he touched and loved along the way.