A season of perfect happiness : a novel

Summary: "A Season of Perfect Happiness fundamentally questions what makes a "good" mother, with a propulsive and beautifully heartrending portrayal of one woman's efforts to find her voice. Ten years after an unspeakable tragedy caused Claire to flee her hometown in Delaware, she finally feels content. She has a quiet, tidy life in Wisconsin, a place she picked at random for its perfect pink mitten shape on a map. Her carefully constructed identity is predicated on a simple plan: Keep her social circle small, and keep the past a secret. But when she meets Erik--a lighthearted theater nerd who gives Claire more of a chance than she's given herself in a long time--that plan seems increasingly impossible, especially after she finds herself emotionally entangled not only with Erik, but with his ex-wife, Annabelle, their three young children, and a small set of friends, the kind she'd always wanted to have around her. Life after the accident can be full of joy, Claire realizes--going on a date to see a thousand-pound pig at the state fair, giggling over obscure inside jokes with friends at a music gig, making smoothies while the kids wear their infamous cooking hats. Being a partner, a best friend, a mother. It's only when a person from her past arrives that Claire finds herself forced to confront what happened all those years ago. And as her past becomes known in her present, her new life--and the deep friendships she's made--hang in the balance. If Claire chooses to confide in the people she's grown to love, will they be able to forgive her? Will she finally forgive herself? Or will everything she has spent the last decade working towards fall apart?"--