Join us as Ocean House owner and award-winning author Deborah Goodrich Royce moderates a conversation with our featured author, New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe.

About the Author: Mary Alice Monroe is based in Charleston, South Carolina, is the New York Times best-selling author of thirty books–and counting. Richly layered and rooted to place her Lowcountry-set novels defy literary labels. More than feel-good escapism or traditional beach reads, her engrossing stories deftly explore the intersections and parallels between Mother Nature and human nature, hooking readers emotionally and introducing them to characters and causes that live in their hearts and minds. Her robust library of work–from the popular Beach House series to her compelling fiction, to her newer middle grade series, The Islanders–engages readers across generational lines, inspiring them to take a harder look at the environment–and our impact on it. To ask the important questions. To seek answers. To create connections–both with nature and in our personal lives.

About Where the Rivers Merge: The Rivers End, Monroe brings the compelling family saga to an emotional conclusion that will resonate with readers. The novels’ timely topics of friendship, feminism, parent/child relationships, and the environment make each book of the duology perfect for book clubs. 

1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. Free spirited, she refuses to be confined by societal norms. Instead, Eliza revels in exploring the golden fields and sparkling ponds of Mayfield, observing wildlife, and riding horses.

But her halcyon days are cut short by the Great War, coastal storms, and unexpected challenges to Mayfield. As Eliza battles personal pains and the ravages of family turmoil over the years, her love and devotion for the natural world puts her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era.

1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She’s fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family—or watch them both be split apart.

Set against the evocative landscape of the twentieth-century American South, Where the Rivers Merge is a dramatic and sweeping multigenerational family story of unyielding love, lessons learned, profound sacrifices, and the indomitable spirit of a woman determined to persevere in the face of change to protect her family legacy and the land she loves.

For more information about Mary Alice Monroe, visit maryalicemonroe.com. For details on Deborah Goodrich Royce and the Ocean House Author Series, visit deborahgoodrichroyce.com