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“Atmospheric and quietly powerful, The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian explores twinship, love, and identity on a Maine island where memory and rivalry bind two lives. A striking debut about family—what holds, what loosens, and what we cannot leave behind.” — Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game and Little Monsters
She won’t sleep tonight: She’s waiting for morning, which will bring not only the sun’s warmth but her husband’s funeral and, finally, the return of his brother.
Rose Smith’s debut novel feels like an instant classic in its examination of the many kinds of love within a family. With beautiful settings and complex characters, she brings to vivid life the McCauleys of Shep’s Island. Sheila and Ian have raised their boys here; Egan wants to be a professional athlete, Lucian an artist, following in the footsteps of their complicated and distant mother. On a trip abroad, Lucian meets Lea, who accompanies him home to idyllic Shep’s Island. When a family secret comes to light, Lea flees back to the mainland, not with Lucian—but with his twin, Egan, whose connection with Lea is immediate and undeniable.
The years pass and fate continues to bring these three into one another’s orbit as the fault lines in the McCauley family change and widen. The island, with its shifting shoreline and harsh beauty, mirrors the inner lives of Smith’s characters. Immersive, unforgettable and propulsive, The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian is a deeply moving love story that illuminates the ties that bind us to one another and to home.
The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian
ADVANCE PRAISE
“The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian doesn’t read like a debut novel, but that—somehow—is what it is. Characters as vividly real as your neighbors? An unforgettable setting? A propulsive plot? They’re all here, and Rose Smith is a writer to watch.”
Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls and the North Bath Fool novels
“Atmospheric and quietly powerful, The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian explores twinship, love, and identity on a Maine island where memory and rivalry bind two lives. A striking debut about family—what holds, what loosens, and what we cannot leave behind.”
Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game and Little Monsters
“With graceful prose and an attentive eye for the complexities and contradictions of love, Rose Smith has fashioned a saga of family romance and betrayal that held me in its grip from its opening sentence through to its bracing end.”
Marisa Silver, author of At Last
“The Shared Life of Egan and Lucian is a celebration of both an extraordinary family and the way the intensities of some of our most passionate bonds can weather any number of demoralizing secrets and betrayals. It’s also masterful on the way that that same fierce focus can blind even the most self-aware. Rose Smith’s debut is an arresting and lyrical reminder of all there is to cherish and how quickly it can all go away.”
Jim Shepard, author of The Queen of Bad Influences
“What a lovely, captivating novel! Rose Smith smoothly navigates a memorable story of twin brothers and the woman who loves them both. Her prose is luscious, and she has much to show us about love and art and parenthood and so much else. And I don’t think I’ve ever read a more affecting description of Maine’s everchanging and often devastating landscape. Brava.”
Monica Wood, author of How to Read a Book