Author Talk: J. Courtney Sullivan, "The Cliffs"

Darien Library and Barrett Bookstore welcome New York Times bestselling author J. Courtney Sullivan, who will discuss her latest book, The Cliffs. It was the Reese’s Book Club selection for July 2024.

J. Courtney Sullivan will be in conversation with local writer Page Berger.

A book that the New York Times Book Review calls “wonderful… fascinating… riveting…", it is a haunting tale of intertwined destinies, where ancient walls hold secrets as deep as the woman who now walks their halls—how the echoes of history can reshape both a home and the soul that inhabits it.

About the Book

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.

Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.

Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.

About the Author

J. Courtney Sullivan is The New York Times bestselling author of the recently published novel, The Cliffs. She has also published the bestselling novels Maine, Saints for All Occasions, Friends and Strangers, The Engagements, and Commencement. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages. Sullivan's writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, New York,  Real Simple, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among many others. In 2017, she wrote the forewords to new editions of two of her favorite classic novels—Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. 

She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children. Her latest novel is The Cliffs.

Photo credit to Niall Fitzpatrick.

About Page Berger

Page Berger is a freelance ghostwriter and writer who pens the bi-weekly Four Top newsletter. She graduated cum laude from Davidson College and earned master’s degrees from Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Page held positions at the Robin Hood Foundation and Teach For America and worked for several years as the marketing and event director at Barrett Bookstore. 

Page’s passion lies in fostering community and connection through conversation and storytelling. Learn more at her website.