The Winters, a novel from the author of Roberta’s Woods
On the coast of Rhode Island in 1978, the Winter family lives in a decaying farmhouse within view of the Atlantic Ocean. When family patriarch Jim Winter inexplicably commits suicide one January morning, his wife, Helen, teenage daughter, Joyce, and fisherman son, Dale, are left to pick up the pieces.
Like the man whose life insurance is worth more than his life, Helen Winter knows that cashing in on the value of their oceanfront property would be both the salvation and destruction of the Winters, who have farmed this seaside land for three centuries.
Cousin Ludlow Winter gives her a job in his real estate office, but he also pressures her to sell more and more of the farm. Neighbor Fran Kennedy befriends her, but also seems to be eying her antiques. Her sister-in-law, Loretta, wants to turn the Winter land over to the Audubon Society.
Meanwhile, Joyce tries to make sense of her father’s suicide and a generation of family secrets all while trying to preserve her Swamp Yankee heritage, which is threatened by greedy developers and outsiders who have no understanding of this land the Winters call home. Her best friend, Camille, a Narragansett Indian, is on a journey of her own to untangle her heritage.
As a storm threatens to overtake the farm, the journeys of these women will collide with hurricane force.
Cover design by the eBook Bakery
Note from I Michael Grossman of the EBook Bakery. “I would like to personally endorse Betty J. Cotter’s book, The Winters. The interiority of this work is superb. Repeatedly Betty’s writing reaches the kind of purely lyrical, poetic heights that writers strive for, but few achieve. Bravo Betty-The Winters is the best book I’ve read this year.”
Betty J. Cotter
Betty J. Cotter holds an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her first novel, Roberta’s Woods, was published by Five Star in 2008. Publisher’s Weekly praised its “strong character development, sensual writing and absorbing plot.” An excerpt from The Winters earned her a fiction fellowship from the R.I. State Council on the Arts in 2006. She teaches writing at the University of Rhode Island and works as a newspaper editor.