If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go

For fans of Pam Houston's Cowboys Are My Weakness—a novel in stories about a young woman and her town in the early 1970s

It is the summer of 1972, and Katie has just turned eighteen. Katie and her town, Elephant Beach, are both on the verge: Katie of adulthood, Elephant Beach of gentrification—but not yet. Elephant Beach is still gritty, working-class, close-knit. And Katie spends her time smoking and drinking with her friends, dreaming about a boy just back from Vietnam who's still fighting a battle Katie can't understand.

Impeccably crafted and hugely affectionate, this novel in stories is a vivid portrait of a place whose conflicts—between mothers and daughters, men and women, haves and have-nots—reverberate to our own time.