'Rita considered the dead. Shut her eyes. Stacked each person in order like folded laundry, warm and crisp from the sun. She wondered how her name would sound amongst them.'
The Gordon girls are no strangers to local gossip. Growing up with a mystic grandma and a mother in a lesbian relationship with the reverend will do that to a family. But for Rita - the fifty-year-old baby sister, back in the village for possibly the final time - there is nowhere else quite like home.
As four generations gather beneath the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, and the kettle comes to a boil, Rita steels herself to share her big news, not yet aware that hers won't be the only secret laid bare before the festivities are over.
With plenty of tipples, a sexy baptism and several German Shepherds named Roger, Hoods Landing is a darkly funny, deeply affectionate novel about the extraordinary lives hidden inside ordinary places and the imperfect bonds that hold families together.