After delivering a stillborn baby, 30-something Mara decides to flee the only life she knows to start over. She arrives in a wealthy coastal town with a dead cell phone and hardly any money, still crushed by her grief but determined to escape her trauma. What she’s gone through is not something she can simply walk away from. As Mara attempts to make new connections and a living for herself, she begins to discover how to pave a way forward. In Tides, author Sara Freeman constructs a portrait of a woman broken by loss to reveal an aching and emotional narrative, told in clear and piercing prose. —Annabel Gutterman