The Houses We Keep

Vivienne Cole moved to one of the most coveted neighborhoods outside Washington, D.C. for practical reasons. The school data. The commute calculation. She does not mention the other reason, the one that goes back to a childhood spent pressing her face against the glass of places like this one, certain something was happening behind those lawns and those windows that she would never be allowed to see.

She is right.

When she is appointed co-chair of the spring fling alongside Sloane Whitfield, the woman who runs the neighborhood's social architecture with a warmth so practiced it looks almost natural, Vivienne enters a world of careful appearances and carefully moved information. She is cordial. She keeps her own records. And when the budget numbers stop adding up, she has to decide what kind of person she is, and what to do with what she knows.

The Houses We Keep is a sharp, intimate novel about the cost of belonging. About the women who hold social power and the women who watch them hold it. About what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime learning to read rooms finally reads the right one.