Following his acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Did You Ever Have a Family, Bill Clegg returns with a deeply moving, emotionally resonant second novel about the complicated bonds and breaking points of female friendship, the corrosive forces of secrets, the heartbeat of longing, and the redemption found in forgiveness.
A retired widow in rural Connecticut wakes to an unexpected visit from her childhood best friend whom she hasn't seen in forty-nine years.
A man arrives at a Pennsylvania hotel to introduce his estranged father to his newborn daughter and finds him collapsed on the floor of the lobby.
A sixty-seven-year-old taxi driver in Kauai receives a phone call from the mainland that jars her back to a traumatic past.
These seemingly disconnected lives come together as half-century-old secrets begin to surface. It is in this moment that Bill Clegg reminds us how choices-to connect, to betray, to protect-become our legacy.
Deeply observed and beautifully written, this novel is a feat of storytelling, capturing sixty years within the framework of one fateful day.
"A mesmerizing book about family and memory and friendship and the long arc of life. I've loved every book by Bill Clegg, but The End of the Day might be my favorite because these characters, these quietly remarkable women, remind me of the epic lives hidden within all of us. Reading it is like studying a stained-glass window up close, each piece bright and sharply cut, but when you step back and
David Ebershoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife
"Beautiful and necessary, Bill Clegg's second novel is about no less than: the riddles of friendship, the fracture of class in America, and the immediate and long-term impact of trauma on the human spirit. Wise to the ways in which hurt people hurt people, he instinctively finds the humor in tragedy and the pathos in the mundane. The End of the Day is a deeply compassionate, feminist book that had
Lena Dunham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl
