2019 novel by Sarah Dessen
The Rest of the Story is a novel by Sarah Dessen. It was released on June 4, 2019. The novel focuses on Emma Saylor Payne, and her summer with her mother's family, after her summer plans are canceled and her father scrambles to find a solution before he leaves the country. As her only option, she spends the summer with her maternal grandmother, whom she last saw years earlier at her mother's funeral. Over the summer she reconnects with relatives and friends she hadn't seen in years, and learns more about her past and connects the idea of her mother with the truth.
Plot summary.
At 17-years-old, Emma Saylor Payne is stuck with nowhere to go after her summer plans fall through and her father, stepmother, and grandmother are all leaving the country. It was decided that she would spend the summer up at North Lake; her mother's childhood home, with her cousins, aunts, and maternal grandmother. Emma Saylor doesn't remember much about her mother, who died when she was ten, but she does remember some of the stories that her mother would tell her about a big lake, and upon arriving at the lake she realizes that her mother's stories don't paint the full picture. There are two communities at the lake; her mother grew up in working-class North Lake, while her father spent the summers in a wealthier Lake North resort.
The more time that Emma Saylor spends at North Lake the more time it feels like she is divided into two people; Emma, who her father has raised and grown to know, and Saylor, the name her mother called her and maternal family has adopted. However, with the help of Roo Price, the boy who was her best friend at four during her first time at the lake she learns more about her past and reconciles her two images of herself.
Themes.
A major theme in the book is about the topography of people in the vacation towns, after a trip by Dessen to White Lake and the gentrification of the area inspired her. The town that Emma Saylor stays at for the summer is split between North Lake and Lake North, with the locals and less monetarily well off on one side and the new country clubs and more monetarily well off individuals on the other.
Another major theme that is traced throughout the book is about mental health and addiction as Emma Saylor recounts her mother's personal struggles with drugs, alcohol and repeatedly going to rehab, before dying of a heroin overdose when Emma Saylor was 12-years-old. Dessen also brings it up as many of the friends and relatives Emma Saylor meets adhere to the "No Drinking and Boating" Rule and bring up the alcohol based accident that killed Roo's father. Dessen claimed that she was inspired by her concern of a larger showing of younger people in the obituary papers she read and wanted to highlight the "epidemic" of addiction within the United States.