You Could Be Happy Here: A Novel

Lucy—single, childless, in her thirties—studies insects and ecosystems, in part to make sense of human behavior. ​That hard-won insight is shattered when her mother dies prematurely, her sister claims the California family home, and Lucy learns that her biological father is apparently a Costa Rican they knew when the family spent summers in the coastal village of Palmita. ​

Reeling, Lucy heads south in search of this phantom father.​ But he is nowhere to be found, and none of the locals seem to remember her. The dreamy, off-grid paradise she recalls from childhood has become a hard-edged town leery of outsiders. ​

You Could be Happy Here is a story of identity, belonging, and of opening your heart to a deeper understanding of kinship and home.