In the vein of Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread and Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton , Miller's Valley is an emotionally powerful story about a family you will never forget. In a small town on the verge of big change, a young woman unearths deep secrets about her family and unexpected truths about herself. For generations the Millers have lived in Miller Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life, from the 1960s to the present, with intimacy and honesty. As she eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realise, can be 'a place where it's just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content'. Millers Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss and, ultimately, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, 'No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.

' We are reminded that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever. 'Mesmerizing . Quindlen makes her characters so richly alive, so believable, that it's impossible not to feel every doubt and dream they harbor, or share every tragedy that befalls them . the novel is overwhelmingly moving . The ending fast-forwards like a kind of majestic tide . Family bonds are restructured, and secrets (one so startling, you never see it coming) are revealed that either wedge people apart or bind them together. But Quindlen also allows her characters mystery -- and some of what's unknown stays unknown, which burnishes her story with a kind of haunting grace and truthfulness. Here, in this novel, where so much is about what vanishes, there is also a deep beating heart, of what also stays' New York Times.