THE WINTERS

A feminist perspective meets a classic tale in this reimagining of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca; the story of a young woman who learns how to find resolve and strength within herself in order to confront the deadly skeletons of a family she does not truly belong to.

When Max, a young, wealthy widower sweeps into the Cayman Islands, our unnamed narrator helplessly finds herself falling for his charm as she captains his daily sailing routes. Despite only knowing each other for a few weeks, their affair intensifies when her boss tries to sabotage it. When he learns they will be separated, Max confesses that he was planning to propose to her, and the narrator casts off her doubts and better judgment for the chance of a life with him. Whisked from the familiarity of her tropical home to Asherley, his cold, regal Sag Harbor estate, she is still uneasy as she tries to embrace the dream of her new life.

Woefully out-of-place at Asherley, the narrator finds herself not only contending with the memory of Rebecca, Max's seemingly perfect, tragically dead wife, but also with his daughter Dani, whose relationship with her father is unnervingly close. Everything in Asherley is stamped with Rebecca's ghost, and Dani's cruel dismissal further exacerbates the narrator's isolation. Max tries to be helpful to them both, giving Dani space for what he sees as teenage angst, and pushing the narrator towards a friendship with his sympathetic sister. But when it seems that Dani has sabotaged their wedding with yet another reminder of Rebecca, everything begins to unravel.

Dani's behavior escalates, culminating in vivid nightmares of her mother's corpse. Max is distraught, and immediately hospitalizes her, but the narrator suspects there is more afoot on their cold estate than it seems. As her old doubts resurface, she goes after the truth of Asherley and Rebecca's death herself. BETWEEN WINTERS puts a modern spin on a classic story, where the themes of women's sexual expression and punishment are as relevant as ever, and the rejects a "fairy tale" ending for one of feminine triumph.

Lisa Gabriele is the author of Tempting Faith DiNapoli and The Almost Archer Sisters, and is an award-winning TV producer, writer and director. Her writing has appeared in Vice, Nerve, New York Magazine, Washington Post, New York Times Magazine, Globe and Mail, National Post, Elle and Glamour. Her essays have appeared in several anthologies, including The Best American Non-Required Reading. She's also the author of the international best-selling S.E.C.R.E.T. trilogy, under the pseudonym L. Marie Adeline, a series that's been published in more than 30 countries.