A Fortune of Sand

Ruta Sepetys’s historical novel, A Fortune of Sand (2026), is set in 1927 Detroit and follows Marjorie Lennox, an aspiring fashion designer from a powerful automotive glass dynasty. As Marjorie pursues her creative ambitions and greater independence, she encounters the social and familial pressures placed on women who challenge conventional expectations.

Sepetys is an author of historical fiction whose previous works include the Carnegie Medal-winning Salt to the Sea and her debut novel, Between Shades of Gray. In A Fortune of Sand, she uses the backdrop of Prohibition-era Detroit to explore several key themes. The novel examines how wealth and social status can conceal and enable criminal activity in its exploration of The Corruption Behind Wealth and Respectability. It also examines how psychiatric diagnoses and institutionalization can be used to restrict women’s autonomy through the theme of The Use of Psychiatric Diagnoses to Control Women. Marjorie’s commitment to fashion design also shapes her developing sense of self and independence, illustrating Art as a Source of Identity and Independence.

This guide refers to the 2026 Ballantine Books first edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of mental illness, gender discrimination, antigay bias, emotional and physical abuse, substance use, child abuse, sexual content, cursing, illness, death, and animal death.

Plot Summary

In 1927 Grosse Pointe, Michigan, 20-year-old Marjorie Lennox, an aspiring fashion designer from a wealthy automotive glass family, finds herself in trouble with the law yet again. After the Hardwicks complain to the police about a revealing, leaf-covered tunic Marjorie made for Helen’s birthday, Marjorie is taken to the police station but released without being charged. Her father, Duncan Lennox, calls her a liability, while Chet tells her that Duncan has been discussing sending her to a convent for greater discipline and structure. Before this confrontation, information about a women-only arts residency in Detroit had mysteriously appeared in Marjorie’s bedroom. Believing her half-sister Chet left it for her, Marjorie had applied and been accepted. Her siblings, Chet and Graham, help her sneak away to the residency, called the Nightingale, telling their parents she is at the family’s summer cottage. Upon arrival, the houseman, Dock, outlines a strict set of rules, including a 9 pm curfew and a policy of no early departures, and Marjorie signs the lease without fully reading its terms.

At the Nightingale, Marjorie meets her fellow residents: Ivy, a painter preoccupied with Christmas, and Bernice, a furniture architect. Bernice believes that the reclusive Bonafante spends time on the upper floor, a fact that both thrills and puzzles Marjorie. Her stay is marked by strange occurrences: She finds wads of cash hidden in the hollow finials of her bed frame, and a young newspaper delivery boy named Hank begins asking probing questions about Bonafante and a former resident who disappeared from Marjorie’s apartment. Graham warns her that a reporter is investigating Bonafante, and Marjorie later realizes that Hank is the reporter. Later, Marjorie encounters Bonafante himself in the back alley; their brief conversation revives the fascination she has felt for him since they first met years ago. Ivy and Bernice see a newspaper announcement for a housewarming party at the new home of Marjorie’s older half-sister, Cecile, and her husband, Lou. The women convince a reluctant Marjorie to break the residency rules and crash the high-society event.

At the party, Marjorie stays outside to avoid her family, while her friends venture in. Hank the reporter speaks with her and shares information he has gathered about the Lennox family: Duncan is feuding with his father, Cormac, over plans for a new factory; Duncan is doing business with Lou, who has criminal connections; and Duncan was responsible for implicating Marjorie’s artist friend, Peter Howell, in a major jewel theft at the Detroit Institute of Arts, after which Peter disappeared from Marjorie’s life. Inside, Graham and Chet are shocked to see Ivy and Bernice, realizing Marjorie is nearby. After the party, Marjorie and Bernice drive through Grosse Pointe and stop outside Bonafante’s estate. Bonafante arrives while they are there, and Marjorie and Bernice are invited inside. During a private conversation with Marjorie, he warns her that she does not yet understand the circumstances surrounding her. The next day, Bernice’s residency ends after an exit interview with Dock, while Ivy does not return to the Nightingale. Marjorie later reads that Ivy, whose real name is Winifred Dixon, has been taken to Eloise after an incident at her home. Suspicious of what is happening at the Nightingale, Marjorie searches Dock’s basement office and discovers files containing purported psychiatric diagnoses for several residents, including herself. On the upper floor, Juliette Bonafante explains that the downstairs arts residency is genuine but also serves to evaluate selected women whose mental health has been questioned, while the upper floor provides extended residential care for women who need additional assistance. Juliette owns the building and runs the program, while Charles supports her work. She also tells Marjorie that Duncan had been planning to send her to Eloise and that Charles helped bring the Nightingale brochure to her family’s attention after learning of Duncan’s plans.

Furious and betrayed, Marjorie leaves the Nightingale, and while loading her belongings into the car Graham lent her, she finds a suitcase already in the trunk. Inside, she discovers baby shoes containing a collection of jewels. Before returning home, she visits Ivy at Eloise, where Ivy tells her that the ruby necklace Cecile wore at the party had been stolen from one of Ivy’s neighbors. Connecting the stolen necklace with the jewels in the suitcase and her knowledge of the family’s glass business, Marjorie realizes her father and Lou run a theft racket, using glass replicas of stolen gems. She confronts Peter Howell, who confirms that Duncan and Lou blackmailed him into swapping valuable jewels for glass copies by threatening to publish intimate photographs of him with another man. A well-connected fixer from Grosse Pointe later made the problem disappear, with the condition that Peter never speak to Marjorie again because she was in grave danger.

Returning home to Glen Arden, Marjorie finds love letters revealing a longstanding attachment between her mother, Lilah, and Duncan’s younger brother, Uncle Jamie. Marjorie begins to suspect that Jamie may be her biological father and that this may explain Duncan’s resentment toward her. At a tense family dinner, she makes pointed references to Duncan’s blackmail of Peter and recites William Blake’s poem “A Poison Tree.” 

Marjorie accepts a dinner invitation from Bonafante at his estate. He explains that he assists selected people with delicate matters, and Marjorie realizes that he was the fixer who helped Peter’s family. She tells him what she has discovered about Duncan and Lou’s jewel racket and asks for his help. She devises a plan to sell Cecile one of the family’s own fake sapphires and use the proceeds to help Peter leave Detroit, and she asks Bonafante to help Ivy obtain legal assistance and leave Eloise. Bonafante reveals that Cecile’s housewarming party was used as a diversion for another robbery. He also tells Marjorie that a source has confirmed purchases of poison and that he believes Duncan’s liquor is being poisoned, leading Marjorie to suspect Graham and Chet. Bonafante confirms that Duncan poses a real threat to her, possibly intending to silence her permanently. To publicly signal his protection, he escorts her to an event at the Detroit Yacht Club, stunning Grosse Pointe society and her entire family. 

The next morning, a newspaper exposé reveals several of the family’s secrets, including Chet’s authorship of obituaries published under Graham’s name, Graham’s continued use of an eye patch after his injured eye healed, and Lilah’s secret flying lessons. Graham suspects that Cormac supplied information for the article. Cormac later confronts Graham and reveals that he discovered Graham and Chet’s attempt to poison Duncan and secretly replaced the poison with laxative powder. He also revisits a longstanding family secret he had previously entrusted to Graham: Decades earlier, he assumed the Lennox identity, while the real Lennox lies buried in Scotland.

After spending the night with Bonafante, Marjorie learns how the Nightingale brochure reached her. Bonafante explains that he arranged for Lilah to encounter it because she could see what Duncan was planning. Lilah then placed the brochure in Marjorie’s room without knowing the program’s true purpose. Bonafante had hoped that Dock’s evaluation would help protect Marjorie from Duncan’s plans. Marjorie drives away from his estate and arrives at a crossroads: A right turn leads back to her family at Glen Arden, where she could confront them with what she knows. She also considers leaving the family alone, selling Cecile the fake gem, focusing on her business venture, and building a family of her own. Instead of returning to Glen Arden, she turns left and heads toward Ivy.