The Sisters Chase - by Sarah Healy (Paperback)

About the Book

Now in paperback, the "beautifully written family drama with a mystery at its core"* about two sisters left homeless by their mother's death, and the lengths the fierce older sister will go to protect her beloved young charge

*Joshilyn Jackson, author of The Opposite of Everyone and gods in Alabama

Book Synopsis

A mysterious and "thoroughly surprising" family drama about two sisters left homeless by their mother's death, and the lengths the fierce older sister will go to protect her young charge (The New York Times).

The hardscrabble Chase women--Mary, Hannah, and their mother, Diane--have been eking out a living running a tiny seaside motel that has been in the family for generations. Eighteen-year-old Mary Chase is a force of nature: passionate, beautiful, and free-spirited. Her much younger sister, Hannah, whom Mary affectionately calls Bunny, is imaginative, her head full of the stories Mary tells to give her a safe emotional place in the middle of their troubled world.

When Diane dies in a car accident, Mary discovers that the motel is worth less than the back taxes they owe, and her finely tuned instincts for survival kick in. As the sisters begin a cross-country journey in search of a better life, she will stop at nothing to protect Hannah. But Mary wants to protect herself, too, for the secrets she promised she would never tell--but now may be forced to reveal--hold the weight of unbearable loss.

“Captivating" (Publishers Weekly) and suspenseful, The Sisters Chase is a "striking, heartbreaking story about love, motherhood, and family, with a powerful and elusive protagonist at its heart" (Library Journal).

Review Quotes

"The Sisters Chase is a deliciously compulsive read, a miniature mystery of love, survival, and sisterhood written on the scale of the human heart. Deceptively simple, gracefully realized, and occasionally wicked, it lingers like a summer dream after the last page is turned." --Amy Gentry, author of Good as Gone "Thoroughly surprising...In an era of inflationary cheap praise, in which every run-of-the-mill thriller is advertised as some sort of Nobel-worthy combination of Shakespeare, Scott Turow and, inevitably, Gone Girl, The Sisters Chase is that rare thing, a slow burner that conceals its cunning and sneaks up on you unawares. . . The novel's best creation is Mary herself, as complex, interesting and flawed a heroine as you could hope for, equal parts Becky Sharp, Scarlett O'Hara and some ineffable and winning quality peculiar only to herself. One of the people she most reminded me of, in the end, was Sylvie, the unforgettable protagonist of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, with her pathological restlessness, her inability to settle into anything resembling a conventional life. Mary has this, too, and a self-destructiveness that is all the more poignant because she is fully aware that it exists inside her."--Sarah Lyall, New York Times "The Sisters Chase hits all the right marks. Wonderful characters, so believable that it still surprises me they aren't real people, a heart-wrenching story about love, loyalty, and bonds that can't be broken, and the true nature of survival. This is the kind of book that you read late into the night, eyes heavy, and wake up thinking about until you've finally finished the last page." --Chevy Stevens, author of Those Girls and Still Missing "The Chase girls, aptly named, are always, it seems, on the run, chasing a better life, a place where they'll be at home, be safe and where the secrets of their past won't come crashing down on them. Sarah Healy has created, in Mare and Bunny, characters so real and flawed my heart ached for them, and I so, so wanted them to find that safe place called home. The Sisters Chase is exquisitely written and full of surprises, love and loss; it is clearly the work of a writer at the top of her game." --Jennifer McMahon, author of The Night Sister "Absorbing.... Healy takes every opportunity to surprise her reader as Mary and Hannah grow up and into themselves. The sisters' relationship--and their resilience--makes this novel powerful." --Kirkus Reviews "Sarah Healy's The Sisters Chase will stay with me for a long time. It's a heart-rending tale of survival filled with deftly revealed surprises and twists. In less skillful hands, Healy's deeply flawed young protagonist, Mary, might have been unlikeable, but here she's redeemed by her love and compassion for her younger sister Hannah. In fact, I ached for Mary as her plans to save herself and Hannah fall apart and tension builds. Each chapter ends on a note of suspense and surprise that demands you turn the page. An exciting read!" --Diane Chamberlain, author of Pretending to Dance and The Silent Sister "A beautifully written family drama with a mystery at its core, The Sisters Chase is a layered and lovely book about the bonds of love crashing up against the rocky shore of the world. Mary Chase is thorny and fractured and fascinating, and I will not forget her or her struggle to --

About the Author

Sarah Healy is the author of three novels. She lives in Vermont with her husband and three sons.