Windfall

The Great Recession has snatched away Jen Carrigan’s Silicon Valley job—then her home. Desperate, she packs up her dog and becomes a squatter. The squat? An abandoned mansion in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There, Jen befriends neighbor Stanley Abram, a solitary widower haunted by his own troubled past with the house. When a mysterious holiday invitation from her sister lures Jen back to San Diego and into the shattered family that exiled her years before, the ghosts of the past and her precarious present are set on a collision course. But as she musters the courage to untangle the decades-long web of lies that’s defined her life, the mansion delivers a devastating surprise. An emotional thriller set against the backdrop of coastal California, Windfall is the debut novel of author P.W. Borgman.