Billie McNally

The Ladies of the Grove Billie McNally

The Ladies of the Grove centers around Anna, a thirty-something woman who is just finally, finding herself. She has grown up under the critical eye of a mother, who is never satisfied. Her only reprieve as a child had been summers spent at her grandmother's seaside cottage on the shore of a bay town in New Jersey. The Grove, an enclave of twelve summer bungalows which have been owned for generations by the same families, heralding from Brooklyn and Ireland, rarely change hands outside of these clans. Anna becomes the first of her generation to own one of the bungalows when Lily, Anna's beloved grandmother passes away. Anna, at loose ends, having left her fiancé at the altar and taking a hiatus from her career as a travel writer, decides to spend the summer at the cottage. Her daydreams of afternoons spent swimming in the bay and riding her bike along the coast soon fade into a nightmare of home repair when Anna arrives at the Grove to discover the cottage in a state of advanced disrepair. As Anna weighs her options as to whether to tear down the shack or have workers come in to refurbish, she is reunited with her grandmothers' oldest friends. She is also reunited with her first love, a boy who had led her into a scandalous summer, which ended with her banishment from The Grove, at her mother's demand. As Anna takes on the task of rebuilding her new home and her life, she gets reacquainted with the Ladies of the Grove. Through stories, they share she begins to unravel the mysteries of her dysfunctional family. She discovers answers to questions she had never thought to ask. The bones of long-hidden skeletons begin to rattle in the walk-in closets of her parent's beach front mansion. Stories she had thought were her family legacy are soon shown to be fabrications created to hide nasty secrets. Lose yourself in history, friendships and loves, lost and won. Grab a blanket and settle in for a family saga which will make you wish you were part of the kith and kin of The Grove.