Lynelle Page Carter knows how it feels to have a baby growing inside you, knows the way it makes you lazy and yearning and peaceful all at the same time. But she has no words for the grief she feels at the sudden death of her infant daughter, Grace, after only three days of life. Wracked by a sorrow that reawakens feelings of an earlier loss, a sorrow so deep she has to leave her husband and their working-class life in New Jersey, Lynelle returns home to Florida. As she aimlessly wanders the beaches of Singing Island, she sees an infant in a stroller, alone under tree. Surely the child - who looks more like her than her own lost little girl - is waiting for her, waiting to fill her empty arms and heart.In Florida with her husband and three children to visit her parents, Annie Thompson is torn between the demands of her family and her own unfulfilled need for individuality. Then, in the blink of an eye, it happens: One moment three-month-old Dylan is there, left with his older brother for an instant; the next he is gone. All Annie's logic and courage desert her. Without her son, she simply cannot imagine how she will go on. Falling deeper into a marital crisis, terrified that she is coming unanchored, Annie must confront her feelings of grief and guilt over the child who may be lost to her forever.Alternating between the voices of Lynelle and Annie, Lynelle by the Sea probes the depths of primal love in a poignant, sparely told novel of family, faith, and two women whose lives are transformed by tragedy and redemption. Read Less