In Every Way

Chapel Hill college student Maria finds herself in a predicamentunexpectedly pregnant at nineteen. Still reeling from the fresh discovery of her mother’s diagnosis with cancer, Maria’s decision to give her daughter up for adoption is one that seems to be in everyone’s best interest, especially when it comes to light that the child’s father hasn’t exactly been faithful to her following the birth of her daughter. So when her mother proposes an extended trip to sleepy coastal town Beaufortthe same town that the adoptive couple Maria chose for her daughter just happens to live inMaria jumps at the chance to escape.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Maria finds herself listless and bored soon after her arrival in Beaufort, and a summer job seems like a possible cure. She has kept close watch on the couple she chose to adopt her daughterthey live mere blocks awayand, as opportunity demands, she accepts a position as their nanny. Maria ingratiates herself into the familyhesitantly, at first, and then with all the confused and chaotic fervor of a mother separated from her child.

In Every Way is a heartfelt novel that brings to light the unknowing destruction that heartache can manifest, and it brims with the redemptive power of new beginnings.

Nic Brown is the author of the novel Doubles and the story collectionFloodmarkers, which was selected as an Editor's Choice by The New York Times Book Review. His writing has appeared inThe New York Times, the Harvard Review, Glimmer Train, and Epoch, among many other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Columbia University, he has been the John and Renee Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi and an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado. Currently he is an assistant professor of English at Clemson University.