Dear Reader,

You might know me by another name. As Beatriz Williams, I write historical fiction set primarily in that tumultuous center of the twentieth century, after the First World War blew apart the remnants of Romanticism and ushered in the modern era. A Hundred Summers dissected the habits and family secrets of a New England beach community during the summer of the hurricane of 1938, while The Secret Life of Violet Grant introduced Vivian Schuyler, a dashing 1960s Manhattan career girl uncovering the scandalous history of her long-lost Aunt Violet. In Tiny Little Thing, Vivian’s older sister Tiny tells her story as a photo-perfect political wife hiding a devastating mistake in her past, during the telegenic age of Camelot.

But Tiny and Vivian have another sister, Pepper, who’s the most tortured—and the most beautiful—of the Schuylers. She’s pregnant with the child of a prominent (and very married) United States senator, from whose savage political ambition she needs a refuge. She finds that refuge in the form of a rare vintage Mercedes Roadster, whose previous owner takes Pepper under her protective wing. As Annabelle Dommerich’s story of passionate young love in 1930s Europe unfolds alongside Pepper’s search for safety and redemption on the 1960s Florida coast, the two women forge a deep and complicated bond.

I hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from Along the Infinite Sea, a novel that took me on a profound emotional journey through a historical moment that has no equal for human heartbreak and fortitude. When I finished this book, I felt it was my best yet, and I can’t wait for you to meet Annabelle and Stefan, Johann and Florian and Pepper, and the rest of the Schuyler family.

Happy reading!

Beatriz