Note: I was provided an advance reader copy of the book.
No spoilers since I intend this to be read by those considering pre-ordering or purchasing the book.
The interesting thing about family secrets is that while they’re ostensibly meant to shield the family from public scrutiny, they tend to obfuscate the truth for those within the family. In Sandra K. Griffith’s debut 2026 novel, out February 24th, One Beautiful Year of Normal, family secrets stretch taut from Paris, France to Savannah, Georgia and across 18 years, threatening to unravel the entire edifice.
August is 30 years old and living in Paris as a ghostwriter. She helps other people tell their stories, which is juxtaposed to the fact of knowing so little of her own story. When she’s notified by a lawyer in Savannah that her aunt, Helen, has died, she’s perplexed. After all, her mother told her Helen died 15 years ago. When the lawyer confirms that, no, Helen died 15 minutes ago, that aforementioned edifice of family secrets faces its first threat of teetering over.
When August was 8 years old, still living in New York City, her father was murdered on her birthday, of all days. For the next three years, she became a de facto caregiver for her mother, who had become mute and swallowed whole by her grief. Which again, it’s jarring that August became a ghostwriter, of a kind, for her mother given what her occupation as an adult would be. Then, in turn, clearly, August’s mother became a “ghostwriter” of how August understood her life, and certainly, of Helen’s, since she conjured up her fabricated death for August.
One day, again on August’s birthday as an 11 year old, Aunt Helen comes to NYC to bring August to Savannah, where she is retired after a career in the Navy. August’s mother is going to be institutionalized, at least until she returns exactly one year later to whisk August away yet again, this time back to Paris (and then on to Italy), as paranoid nomads. Hence, then, the namesake of the book, One Beautiful Year of Normal, where August experienced what it was like to have a “normal” childhood with Helen, to be loved and to love, to have fun.
Of course, “normal” is relative and dictated by what we know within the cocoon weaved by our familial structure. In the case of August, the three years spent caretaking for her mother, keeping the façade of life operational, was normal. The year with Helen then became the new, different form of normal. And then once again, becoming a paranoid nomad with her mute mother was a return to a familiar kind of normal. We only have what we know … until we don’t.
Through Griffith’s narrative, alternating between August’s year of normal at 11 years old to her unfurling the family secrets at 30 years old — with a doting, compassionate, and patient childhood crush returning to her life — August comes to understand that what we see through the lens of childhood innocence isn’t always what it seems and that even as adults, we maintain that lens to avoid painful truths. Indeed, to unfurl the secrets of the family is to hold up a mirror reflecting back upon yourself and how you are a composite of those secrets, for better or worse.
Griffith’s debut book presented a great deal of tenderness through August as she reckons with what she thought she knew about her family and her life, but never in an overly maudlin way. If anything, the cerebral moments August has in her head, and especially the conversations she has with Thomas, the boyhood crush, have the quality of being that positive kind of cringe that is endearing and affable. Positive cringe has a way of elucidating truth, too, and engendering well-earned optimism. Cringe has unnecessary connotation in that way, but I digress. I particularly enjoyed the voice Griffith brought to 11 year old August: mature because of needing to be a caregiver foisted upon her while still being a child with plentiful unknowns, but an insatiable curiosity.
I thoroughly enjoyed Griffith’s book, and found myself reading at a feverish pace as more and more secrets of August’s family were divulged and learned. And of course, the Southern setting is always going to add an inherent layer of intrigue to any story. In this case, the feel-good charm comes from Savannah and the “gothic” looms large from the Paris and NYC side of things. For those interested in books about familial drama, you have to add One Beautiful Year of Normal to your 2026 to-be-read list.
Milam's Musings 