By: Kate Broad
ISBN: 9781250363046
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: 07/22/2025
Format: Other
My Rating: TBR (ARC)
A riveting debut novel for readers of Celeste Ng and Liane Moriarty, Greenwich explores the nature of desire and complicity against the backdrop of immense wealth and privilege, the ways that whiteness and power protect their own, and the uneasy moral ambiguity of redemption.
Summer, 1999. Rachel Fiske is almost eighteen when she arrives at her aunt and uncle’s mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her glamorous aunt is struggling to heal from an injury, and Rachel wants to help—and escape her own troubles back home. But her aunt is oddly spacey and her uncle is consumed with business, and Rachel feels lonely and adrift, excluded from the world of adults and their secrets. The only bright spot is Claudia, a recent college graduate, aspiring artist, and the live-in babysitter for Rachel’s cousin. As summer deepens, Rachel eagerly hopes their friendship might grow into more.
But when a tragic accident occurs, the family turns on Claudia in a desperate bid to salvage their reputation. Caught between her upbringing and her feelings for Claudia, her desire to do the right thing and to protect her future, Rachel must make a pivotal choice. She’s the only one who knows what really happened—and her decision has consequences far beyond what she could have predicted.
Praise
"Kate Broad masterfully combines can’t-put-it-down slow-drip suspense with sticky-summer coming-of-age, immersing us along the way in the lives of characters who are heartbreaking and complex and, best of all, given no easy outs. Greenwich is timely, smart, and immensely enjoyable."
– Laurie Frankel, bestselling author of Family Family
“Kate Broad’s Greenwich is a page turner, an engrossing tale of a family tragedy layered against class and racial rifts in an upscale Connecticut suburb. Told from the perspective of a young adult discovering her voice and identity, it’s a riveting read and not-to-be-missed debut.”
– Vibhuti Jain, author of Our Best Intentions
"More than just a compelling coming-of-age story, Greenwich takes a hard look at class, race, and privilege in one of the country's most affluent suburbs. Nobody gets off the hook in this brave and unflinching novel of penance and place."
- Christina Clancy, author of The Snowbirds
"Greenwich is a dark, lush, complex tale about the ways in which perception can be manipulated and privilege rules all. It’s the story of a girl mired in doubt, a girl who’s learned to stifle herself, and the woman she becomes when she learns to let it all go. I simply could not put this urgent, gorgeous book down."
– Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive
"Greenwich is as absorbing and gripping in its suspense as it is deeply affecting in its depth. Kate Broad has fashioned a story and a character that offers a moral tale without absolutes, insights without certainty, and a reading experience that will stay with me forever. Greenwich had me in its grips from start to finish: a beautifully written, unflinching, and harrowing tale of the catastrophic effects people can have on each other, even before they know who they are."
– Liz Harmer, author of The Amateurs and Strange Loops
"Prepare for an intense reading experience. Greenwich examines race, privilege, and culpability in a coming of age story that reads like a powerful thriller. Book clubs will find themselves immersed in lengthy discussions about whether accidents just happen - or is someone always responsible. Get ready to have your opinions challenged and your emotions heightened when you spend a summer in Greenwich with Rachel and her family."
– Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller
About the Author
photo by Brittanny Taylor
KATE BROAD holds a BA from Wellesley College and a PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is a Bronx Council on the Arts award winner for fiction, and her writing appears or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, No Tokens, The Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere. Greenwich is her first novel.
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
Greenwich begins with an epigraph from Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, a book that’s influenced so much of my writing for its look at how our individual actions shape our common world, and how the stories we tell ourselves about those actions influence their meaning.
The germ of my novel started with the image of a lonely teenager as she’s picked up from a train station and whisked to her aunt and uncle’s house. I felt her excitement for a fresh start—and my own sense of foreboding. I asked myself, what if it wasn’t just a house, but an estate, its grandeur seductive and dangerous? What secrets would those brick walls hide? What would it be like for a young woman to step into this world of wealth and deception right as she’s entering adulthood and learning who she is? In a novel about the reach and ripple effects of privilege, it was important for me to critique Rachel’s choices while also exploring where her views come from, the impact they have, and how pervasive they remain.
Greenwich is a story about class, race, sexuality, and power. It’s about how mistakes can have life-altering consequences. It asks how our perceptions and biases shape our versions of events. Who is allowed to have a childhood and stay innocent? Who is the first to be blamed? Who has to labor for others? Who gets to be believed and forgiven?
No one novel can have all the answers, but I think the questions Greenwich raises are important to grapple with—in our politics, in our relationships with each other, and in our literature and art. I hope the novel will spark conversation, and that it will be as meaningful to read as it was for me to write.
~Kate Broad
