What We Left in Summer

Ellie Mae Carter has mastered the art of invisible motherhood. She manages schedules, solves problems, and keeps everyone happy while slowly disappearing from her own life. At forty, with both children in school full-time, she should feel liberated. Instead, she feels lost. When a chance encounter with Jake Avery—her first love—sends her carefully ordered world into a tailspin, Ellie is forced to confront uncomfortable truths about the woman she's become. Jake represents everything she used to be: bold, confident, unafraid to take up space. Now he's back in her life through a series of coincidences, and Ellie can't stop thinking about the version of herself that existed when he knew her. As old feelings resurface and new questions emerge, Ellie must navigate the complex terrain of marriage, motherhood, and identity. Is she longing for a lost love, or mourning a lost self? Can she reclaim who she used to be without destroying the life she's built? Set against the backdrop of small-town Connecticut, this emotionally honest and introspective novel explores the complexities of marriage, motherhood, and identity. It asks the question every woman faces: In caring for everyone else, what happened to me? A story about finding yourself again, even when you're not sure where to look.