St. Christie's Island

St. Christie's Island is the story of small-town Florida in the 1970s and '80s, and of Ainsley Quinn, 17, a girl experiencing first love and her dawning sexuality. It is also a vivid and engaging story of family and friendship and the daily rhythms and preoccupations of all the Quinns: Ainsley, who falls in love with a promising race car driver, whose dreams cannot include her . . . her father, Parker, a citrus grower obsessed with developing a freeze-resistant orange . . . and her mother, Grace, an artist who inspires both censure and desire. As her parents fight to survive, Ainsley joins their struggles, testing her own strengths and weaknesses, while also facing loss and betrayal. Eventually, she finds herself in a love triangle that includes the man who first broke her heart, Billy Fiske. Central to the story are Ainsley's grandfather, Captain Frank O'Rourke, a shrimper whose childhood love, Phoebe Boone, has come back into his life . . . Jack Henderson, a young grower afraid to risk his heart again . . . and Clay and Lady DeWitt, who have financial and romantic scores to settle with the Quinns. St. Christie's Island tells a multi-layered and multi-generational tale centered on the universal search for meaning and happiness.