What We Meant To Return: A Heron Bay Novel

By M.L. Voss

Ellen Marsh is very good at finishing things. When her estranged mother dies in the small coastal town of Heron Bay, she arrives a day after the funeral with a two-week plan: empty the house, sell it, go home.\n\nThen, under the bed, she finds a handmade crate - and inside it, a ledger. For thirty years her mother lent books to the whole town and wrote every one of them down. The last entry is older than all the others: E.M. - never returned. Door by door, Ellen begins giving the books back. A widower and his bird book. A man still arguing with a dead woman about Steinbeck. A woman who was lent the same novel three times, each time at the right moment. And with every door that opens,

Ellen meets a mother she never knew - a woman with a secret she kept from an entire town, and one book she kept for forty-five years, waiting for her daughter to come for it.\n\nFrom the author of What We Could No Longer Carry comes a quiet, deeply moving novel about the things we lend, the things we keep, and learning to come back on purpose. Perfect for readers of Elizabeth Strout, Kent Haruf, and Fredrik Backman

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H8BVHSZ8
• ISBN13: 9798186609698
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"