Under the Stars

On a July morning in 2024, Audrey Fisher bicycles to the cliffs at Little Bay Point on Winthrop Island, a small fictional island off the Connecticut coast, to identify a dead man. Her mother, the actress Meredith Fisher, has refused to come, though a note found with the body names Meredith as next of kin. Audrey confirms the dead man is Harlan Walker, an elderly stranger whose connection to her family she does not yet understand.

The novel weaves three timelines: Audrey's present-day summer on Winthrop, flashbacks to Meredith's youth on the island in the early 1990s, and the first-person account of Providence Dare, a fugitive housemaid who boarded the steamship Atlantic on the night before Thanksgiving 1846, fleeing Boston under a false name after the suspicious death of her employer, the painter Henry Irving.

Audrey's story begins three months before Walker's death. Her husband, David, vanished after New Year's, emptying their bank accounts, taking out loans in her name, and leaving her with enormous debts and a shuttered restaurant. When Meredith's agent, Adrienne Drucker, calls to say the actress has wrecked her car while driving drunk, Audrey agrees to escort her mother through a summer of supervised sobriety at Greyfriars, the decaying Fisher family estate on Winthrop. On the ferry, Audrey is found crying on the stairs by Sedge Peabody, a wealthy Winthrop Island regular and the driver of a vintage green convertible, who offers her his handkerchief.

Greyfriars is a mildewing ruin. Meredith goes for a midnight swim while Audrey panics searching for her in the dark. The next morning, Meredith hauls bottles of vintage wine from the cellar to pour down the drain. Audrey stops her and drives the collection to the Mohegan Inn, a local dive bar, where she meets the bartender, Mike Kennedy, her biological father, whom she has not seen since she was three.

Their reunion is emotional but strained. When a kitchen fire forces the Mo, as the Mohegan Inn is known locally, to shut down, Sedge proposes a renovation: Mike keeps the venue, Audrey runs the kitchen, and Sedge funds the project. During the renovation, Audrey and Sedge discover a locked trunk in the cellar containing rolled canvases. The first reveals a nude whose subject resembles a portrait of Mike's ancestral grandmother, Mary Winthrop, hanging in his family quarters. An art expert, Mallory Adams, identifies the painter's hidden initials as HLI, the trademark of Henry Irving, and declares the find the most significant art discovery in decades.

The 1993 flashback chapters reveal Meredith's history. At nineteen, she meets Coop Walker, a Princeton student from a wealthy family, at the Mo. They drink, use cocaine aboard his sailboat, and have sex. When Meredith wakes, Coop has cast off into open water, talking wildly about a shipwreck beneath them and wanting to "join the universe." A sudden squall capsizes the boat. Underwater, Coop grabs Meredith's legs and drags her down in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to pull her into a shared death. She breaks free and swims to shore. Coop never reappears. Meredith tells the police a partial story, and Mike corroborates her alibi. Meredith's lifelong guilt, her alcohol addiction, and her difficulty bonding with Audrey all stem from this traumatic night.

Nine months later, Meredith gives birth to Audrey by emergency cesarean. Struggling to bond with the baby and dressed to leave the hospital, she is confronted by Harlan Walker, Coop's father, who suspects the child may be his grandchild and offers to raise her. Seized by unexpected maternal ferocity, Meredith refuses and claims Audrey as her own.

Providence Dare's account, presented as excerpts from a handwritten manuscript, forms the novel's historical spine. Providence served in Irving's household. After Irving's wife died in a fire, Providence became his sole companion and, eventually, his lover and model. He painted her obsessively, producing erotic works he kept hidden. When Irving was found dead at the bottom of his stairs, suspicion fell on Providence. A detective named John Starkweather pursued her relentlessly, and she fled Boston aboard the Atlantic.

Starkweather has followed her onto the ship. As the Atlantic loses power and drifts toward Winthrop Island, the two adversaries form an unlikely alliance, tending the injured and preparing for the worst. Providence discovers that Starkweather has made exquisite charcoal copies of Irving's nude paintings, revealing his own artistic longing. Over a desperate night, as rescue ships turn back and the anchors drag, they exchange confessions. Starkweather swears to protect her, and they sleep chastely in each other's arms before the anchor cable parts and the Atlantic crashes onto the reef. Starkweather throws Providence into the sea and jumps after her. She reaches shore and spots him drifting unconscious. Though his death would free her from prosecution, she screams for help. They are dragged to safety, but Starkweather dies of his injuries.

Back in 2024, the Irving paintings make national news after a leak. Audrey and Sedge's deepening romance fractures when she discovers he built and sold a major company, information he never shared. Feeling deceived, she pushes him away. Then David reappears, having tracked the story through Google Alerts. When Audrey refuses to take him back, he steals the small Irving portrait and flees to the ferry. Audrey follows and gets into his car, hoping to recover the painting. Sedge spots them and pursues up Interstate 91. When David's tire blows out, he takes Audrey hostage at gunpoint and shoots Sedge when Sedge approaches on foot.

Audrey is hospitalized with a concussion and arrested on suspicion of possessing stolen property. Sedge survives surgery for the gunshot wound. At Audrey's bedside, Mike tells her how a freak storm once cancelled the ferry on the day Meredith planned to terminate her pregnancy, a coincidence Meredith took as a sign to keep the baby.

The resolution hinges on Harlan Walker. Dying of pancreatic cancer, he possesses Providence Dare's original manuscript, passed down through Starkweather's family. He offers it to Meredith in exchange for the truth about Coop's death. Meredith tells him a version of the story: that she fell from the boat and Coop drowned trying to save her. Walker accepts this and leaves the manuscript. Providence's account reveals the deeper truth: It was not Providence but Maurice Irving, Henry's son, who caused his father's death. Maurice confronted Irving about the affair, and Irving fell during the altercation. Maurice begged Providence to flee, then sent her the hidden paintings. Providence married a Winthrop Island farmer, bore Irving's child, and wrote her account as a debt to Starkweather's memory.

Walker takes a fatal overdose on the cliffs at Little Bay Point, the scene that opens the novel. His will divides his estate between Meredith and Audrey. The manuscript, shared with the Irving family, proves the paintings were sent to Providence voluntarily, and the Irvings relinquish their claim. Audrey is cleared of all charges.

In the final chapters, Meredith asks Mike to join her on the film set as her sobriety companion. When Sedge returns to the Mo to deliver the authentication papers, Audrey nearly lets him leave. Mike confronts her: She is repeating her mother's pattern of leaving before she can be left. Audrey runs after Sedge's car. He stops and pulls up beside her. At a secluded beach, he tells her he knew she was the one from the moment he saw her on the ferry. She confesses she is in love with him. Meredith suggests that Audrey take over the Mo, keeping her on the island where she has, at last, found a home.