This Must Be the Place: A Novel

A sudden death a never-mailed postcard and a longburied secret set the stage for a luminous and heartbreakingly real novel about lost souls finding one another. The Darby-Jones boardinghouse in Ruby Falls New York is home to Mona Jones and her daughter Oneida two loners and self-declared outcasts who have formed a perfectly insular family unit: the two of them and the three eclectic boarders living in their house. But their small quiet life is upended when Arthur Rook shows up in the middle of a nervous breakdown devastated by the death of his wife carrying a pink shoe box containing all his wifes mementos and keepsakes and holding a postcard from sixteen years ago addressed to Mona but never sent. Slowly the contents of the box begin to fit together to tell a story―one of a powerful friendship a lost love and a secret that if revealed could change everything that Mona Oneida and Arthur know to be true. Or maybe the stories the box tells and the truths it brings to life will teach everyone about love―how deeply it runs how strong it makes us and how even when all seems lost how tightly it brings us together. . With emotional accuracy and great energy Kate Racculias This Must Be the Place introduces memorable charming characters that refuse to be forgotten.