Barefoot: A Novel - Softcover

Elin Hilderbrand lives on Nantucket with her husband and their three young children. She grew up in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and traveled extensively before settling on Nantucket, which has been the setting for her five previous novels. Hilderbrand is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the graduate fiction workshop at the University of Iowa.

When Vicki and her children join her sister, Brenda, and Vicki's best friend, Melanie, on a vacation in Nantucket, each woman brings a disturbing secret. Narrator Katie Hale's gentle voice lends itself well to expressing the trauma of Vicki's recent lung cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy treatments. And Hale is especially believable in characterizing Brenda, who is struggling to come to terms with her recent loss of tenure because of an affair with a student. Melanie is also on an emotional roller coaster, which Hale portrays energetically. She's had a successful in-vitro procedure and is delightedonly to learn that her husband is having an affair. Secondary characters Josh, a student hired to mind Vicky's children, and his girlfriend, Didi, a cunning manipulator, are also given true-to-life performances. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine