A Fortune of Sand

Set in Detroit and the affluent enclave of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the novel follows Marjorie Lennox, a 20-year-old aspiring fashion designer and the youngest of four siblings in a wealthy automotive-glass dynasty. When the story opens, Marjorie is at a police station after being reported for wearing a tree-inspired tunic she designed as a birthday gift for her friend Helen, which a neighbor family deemed indecent. Her half-sister Chet (Charlotte Lennox) arrives with sharp banter, but the charges are dropped after a tall, dark figure speaks to the officer behind a glass partition. Marjorie thinks she recognizes the silhouette as someone who has not been seen in over a year.

The Lennox family is introduced through its fault lines. Duncan Lennox, a belligerent, hard-drinking glass-windshield magnate, has four children: Cecile, Chet, and Graham from his first wife, who died under suspicious circumstances, and Marjorie from his second wife, Lilah. The family patriarch Cormac, known as Gramps, built the fortune and the imposing limestone estate Glen Arden, but Duncan has wrested control of the business. At a birthday dinner, the neighborhood gossip Myrtle Branley mentions that Charles Bonafante, a reclusive bachelor, has reinvested in his arts residency program for women. Marjorie stuns her siblings by announcing she has been accepted. Interspersed throughout the novel are short letters addressed "Dear Coco," written in an intimate, warning tone, whose author and recipient remain unidentified until later.

Graham and Chet cover Marjorie's absence by telling their parents she is at the family cottage. A flashback establishes a prior scandal: Marjorie dated Peter Howell, an artist questioned in connection with a jewel heist at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), and Duncan forbade further contact. While preparing to leave, Marjorie discovers a love note among her mother's belongings from a secret correspondent.

Graham drives Marjorie to the Nightingale, a three-story gray stone building in Detroit. A building manager named Dock presents a lease with strict rules: a nine o'clock curfew, locked doors, no use of the staircase, and no discussing the residency with outsiders. Marjorie signs without reading the fine print. Elaborate supplies arrive, including a Singer sewing machine engraved with her initials, and she finds scratches in her bathroom mirror forming the word "No."

She meets Ivy, a glamorous painter whose canvases all depict Christmas scenes, and Bernice Tessin, a furniture designer from Michigan's Upper Peninsula creating experimental molded-wood chairs. Bernice reveals that Bonafante's Rolls-Royce parks behind the building at night and that he appears to live upstairs, contradicting his reputation as a recluse. A flashback recounts Marjorie's sole prior encounter with Bonafante at a bonfire in the Pontchartrain Hotel before its demolition, where he stepped through smoke, quelled a cinder on her dress, and guided her to safety. They shared a cigarette in silence, and Marjorie has relived this moment ever since.

At Glen Arden, the narrative reveals that Chet secretly writes the obituaries published under Graham's name at The Detroit Times. Graham overhears that a cub reporter named Hank is investigating Bonafante. In a private exchange, Chet whispers that Duncan does not know "that we're the ones killing him" (152): She and Graham have been slowly poisoning their father's liquor.

At the Nightingale, Marjorie encounters Bonafante in the back lot one evening. She later slips out past curfew to leave a viridian tie she sewed in his car, with a note echoing his words from their first meeting. While there, she discovers a gun beneath the seat. That same night, she finds hundred-dollar bills hidden inside a broken bed-frame finial.

When Ivy reads about Cecile's housewarming party, the three women decide to attend. Marjorie designs dresses for each of them, and they escape through Bernice's window. Staying outside, Marjorie peers through the windows at a debauched scene. Hank finds her and, not knowing her identity, reveals that Duncan allegedly set up Peter Howell for the DIA jewel theft and wants to get rid of Marjorie. Graham privately gives Marjorie the Packard keys so she and Bernice can leave. Ivy stays behind.

Marjorie detours to show Bernice the Grosse Pointe estates. When they stop outside Bonafante's château, the gatekeeper invites them inside. Bonafante shows Bernice furniture sketches by the designer Eileen Gray and takes Marjorie to his yacht to stargaze, telling her she is talented but fears she is "in over your head" (171).

Consequences follow swiftly. Dock terminates Ivy's and Bernice's leases. A newspaper reveals that Ivy, whose real name is Winifred Dixon, was taken to Eloise, a sprawling psychiatric facility. In Dock's basement, Marjorie finds clinical files on each resident; her own reads: "Alleged Diagnosis: Chronic Imaginative Derangement" (200). She discovers a hidden third floor housing women in a psychiatric residential unit.

Juliette Bonafante, Charles's older sister and the building's true owner, explains the program's dual purpose. As a teenager, their father locked Juliette away for three years, believing she was possessed, when the cause was a dental condition pressing on a nerve. The residency evaluates women targeted for institutionalization while offering genuine artistic support. Bonafante heard Duncan planned to send Marjorie to Eloise and arranged for the brochure to reach her. Furious at the manipulation, Marjorie storms out. On the stairwell, she impulsively kisses Bonafante, who reciprocates until Juliette interrupts. He tells Marjorie, "I was trying to help you" (197).

Before returning home, Marjorie makes two stops. While loading the Packard, she opens a suitcase in the trunk and discovers baby shoes stuffed with jewels. At Eloise, Ivy confesses she was married at 13 to Luther, an older man who preyed on her after her mother's death. Her obsession with Christmas stems from her last safe memory with her mother on a snowy morning. Ivy reveals that Cecile's ruby necklace was stolen from a neighbor. Marjorie then visits Peter Howell, who confirms Duncan blackmailed him with intimate photographs of Peter with a male partner, forcing Peter to swap the DIA's gem collection with glass replicas from the Lennox factory.

Back at Glen Arden, Marjorie discovers that letters from Lilah's secret lover are postmarked from Barbados, revealing the correspondent is Uncle Jamie, Duncan's younger brother. She suspects Jamie may be her biological father and realizes it was Lilah who planted the residency brochure to protect her from Duncan's asylum scheme. At dinner, Marjorie recites William Blake's "A Poison Tree" in an ominous performance that unsettles the family.

She accepts a dinner invitation from Bonafante, who confirms he is not a gangster but assists people with delicate matters involving safety and reputation. He reveals that Duncan's liquor is being poisoned from within the family, that Cecile's party was a diversion for a heist, and that Myrtle Branley, whom everyone believed dead, faked her death as part of a sting operation. Marjorie presents her own scheme: She will sell her family a fake glass sapphire, using the proceeds to fund Peter's escape and Ivy's divorce lawyer. Their evening becomes deeply romantic.

They make a dramatic appearance at the Detroit Yacht Club dinner dance, where their entrance silences the ballroom. A representative from Himelhoch's, an exclusive retailer, expresses interest in Marjorie's dress designs, while Chet shouts "Brava!" (270). Afterward, Bonafante reveals his real name is Luc, the "Coco" of Juliette's letters.

Gramps confronts Graham, revealing he discovered the poisoning early and swapped the poison with laxative powder. He discloses the family's deepest secret: "The bones of the real Lennox lie in a shallow garden behind a house in Scotland" (284). He orders Graham to end the death plot and warns him never to cross Bonafante.

Over breakfast, Bonafante proposes an intimate elopement, framing it as a partnership of equals, but Marjorie insists on earning her own way. At a crossroads near his estate, she pauses. A right turn leads to Glen Arden. She wraps a strand of tinsel around her neck, a gift from Bonafante and a nod to Ivy's love of Christmas, and turns left toward Eloise, shouting "Santa's coming, Ivy. The sleigh is on the way!" (294). She chooses her friend, her independence, and her own future.