Elevator blurb: An ill-fated love, a hidden pregnancy, and a man's life-long search for his daughter.
Back jacket blurb: Summer, 1970. The Vietnam War rages and the Beatles have broken up. Huntley Bannister, an auto mechanic who reads Shakespeare, believes he’s forever doomed to a boring existence. Margot Lederer, the privileged daughter of a wealthy family from Chicago, summers on Lake Michigan in the exclusive enclave of White Birch Beach near the village of Fairwater.
Their worlds become intertwined when Margot’s car breaks down and Huntley stops to render aid. Huntley and Margot soon find comfort in each other’s company despite their vastly different upbringings. Margot’s parents make their disapproval of Huntley clear during a disastrous dinner. The summer culminates in Margot’s disappearance from Huntley’s life upon the sudden death of her grandfather.
The Lederer’s phone number is unlisted and their address is unknown to Huntley. Already reeling from Margot’s abandonment, the local paper’s announcement of her marriage to a man he knows she doesn’t love further devastates him. Seven painful years pass. On an errand in Fairwater, Huntley rounds a corner nearly colliding with Margot pushing a stroller. Huntley’s attention is drawn to the little girl walking beside her. The resemblance is undeniable; Margot, he is stunned to realize, was pregnant when they parted.
Margot forbids him from contacting her and Margot again walks out of his life--with his child. Denied his rightful place as the girl’s father, he embarks on a thirty-seven-year quest to find her, not knowing if the letters he writes to her will ever be read.
Evoking the Great Gatsby and Doctor Zhivago, The Leavings is a story of passion and tragedy that chronicles one man’s journey to find his daughter—and himself.