One Beautiful Year of Normal

An unexpected death compels a young woman to revisit the dark events of her childhood in Griffith’s eerie family drama.

For 18 years, August Caine has been living in Paris under a different name and trying not to dwell on her past, but an early-morning phone call from Savannah, Georgia, leaves her feeling like the whole world has been turned upside down. August had believed that her beloved aunt Helen was already dead, but the voice from across the ocean delivers a shocking revelation: “Your aunt Helen didn’t die fifteen years ago. She died fifteen minutes ago.” Realizing that her life in Europe with her mentally ill mother has been built on lies, August returns to the mossy cobblestones of Savannah to attend Helen’s funeral and find some answers. When August was a child, her father was murdered at their home in New York City, leaving August’s French mother so distraught that she became mute and agoraphobic. It was then that the boisterous Helen, with her Southern accent so thick it almost sounded fake, stepped in. Helen brought the young August south to Savannah and into a world of wild parties, spooky history, and charming eccentrics. For the first time, August began to feel herself opening up to the world, and she even grew close to the shy neighbor boy, Tommy. But August’s mother whisked her away to Europe, telling her Helen was dead and that the two of them needed to hide for their safety. Returning to Savannah to find Tommy still living next door and Helen’s house largely untouched, August only has questions about why her mother would have lied, why Helen didn’t come after her, and what events leading to her father’s death could have created the need for such secrecy and strife among his survivors.

Griffith’s moody and surprising opening scene will immediately draw readers into August’s unusual and engrossing story. Writing from August’s first-person perspective, the author wraps every description in poignant and elegant prose: “Time twisted and fused into the hum of white engine noise and the murmur of soft voices,” she writes, turning even a simple nap on an airplane into something poetic. The outlandish Helen oozes Southern charm in a way that feels wonderfully idiosyncratic rather than cliched—she grills steaks in T-shirts at formal parties, drives an old hearse, and serves up plenty of genuine wisdom along with her biscuits and gravy. It’s impossible to not want more of her on every page. Griffith cannily keeps the more distressing elements of murder and mental illness lurking around the edges of Helen’s fabulous world to create magnificent tension. Fans of more fast-paced thrillers might grow frustrated with the very slow burn of the mystery at the novel’s center, but readers who lock into the narrative’s sauntering pace will savor every spooky encounter and tiny clue as they inexorably lead to a satisfyingly operatic conclusion.

A standout Southern family mystery filled with lush settings, dazzling characters, and chilling surprises.