The Saddest Girl on the Beach
By Heather Frese
Available 4/9/2024
Grieving after her father’s death, a young woman seeks solace in an Outer Banks beach town of North Carolina where her best friend’s family runs a small inn. The family welcomes Charlotte with chowder dinners and a cozy room, but her friend Evie has a looming life change of her own, and soon Charlotte seeks other attractions to navigate her grief. Will she, like in some television movie, find her way back through a romance, or are there larger forces at play on Hatteras Island? Heather Frese, winner of the Lee Smith Novel Prize and author of The Baddest Girl on the Planet, sets Charlotte on a beautifully rendered course through human frailty, unrelenting science, and the awesome forces of the Carolina coast.
“Hypnotic, beautiful, and as unpredictable as the waves themselves on the spit of Hatteras Island. Readers will fall in love with Charlotte and Evie, whose love story is as deep as any romance . . . the perfect beach read.”
—Michele Young-Stone, Lost in the Beehive and Above Us Only Sky
“A moving meditation on grief and the forces that both pull people together and tear them apart. The coastal setting is so rich and beautifully rendered, you can practically hear the waves, a rhythm that mirrors the highs and lows of loss and love.”
—Jill McCorkle, Old Crimes and Hieroglyphics
“A story of hard-earned hope. These pages quickly feel like home, or a Carolina beach you’re never ready to leave.”
—James Tate Hill, Blind Man’s Bluff
Heather Frese’s debut novel, The Baddest Girl on the Planet, won the Lee Smith Novel Prize, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and was named one of the Women’s National Book Association’s Great Group Reads of 2021. She attended Ohio University for her M.A. followed by an M.F.A. in fiction from West Virginia University. A freelance writer, Heather worked with Outer Banks publications as well as publishing short fiction, essays, poetry, and interviews in various literary journals, including Michigan Quarterly Review, the Los Angeles Review, Front Porch, the Barely South Review, Switchback, and elsewhere. Coastal North Carolina is her longtime love and source of inspiration, her writing deeply influenced by the wild magic and history of the Outer Banks. She currently writes, edits, and teaches in Raleigh, North Carolina.
