Just Jennifer

Three Story House by Courtney Miller Santo (William Morrow, August 2014)

Three cousins, Lizzie, Elyse and Isobel, known the Triplins since they were children, converge on the house owned by Lizzie’s grandmother, now her mother, in Memphis overlooking the Mississippi, which has been condemned and is scheduled for demolition.  As battered and worn as the house is, so are the Triplins, but something about the house takes a hold of them and as they fight to be allowed to keep the house and begin to renovate and remodel it, a change begins in each of them, reshaping their lives, revealing a long held secret from which one of them may never fully recover.  Lizzie’s career as a professional soccer player is all but over due to injuries and the memories she is uncovering in her grandmother’s house are unsettling and leading her on a journey from which she can never return.  Elyse is obsessed with the boy from high school, the one that got away, the one that is about to marry her sister; will her obsession ruin her sister’s wedding or sabotage her own future?  Isobel is hoping for stardom and fame, but how far is she willing to go and what will she give up to achieve it? The story is told effectively told from each of the young women’s points of view, the house looming in the background, a metaphor for all that was and all that could be for this group of twenty-somethings who recognize the most important things in life: family, friends and being true to yourself.