"What is happening in the world the day of the kiss is that the news of the Allied victory in Europe during World War II has just made it onto the radio, and two strangers meet. And the way I got there was because I found out several years ago that my grandmother had a secret that absolutely shocked me."
"What I started to do, I think, was get a little obsessed with the idea of what goes into a secret and how a secret itself is pretty simple. You know, it can just be a mistake. And we all make mistakes. But the power in the secret comes from the lies that go into maintaining it and some of those lies that we have to tell to ourselves over and over again."
The novel opens with an unplanned, forbidden kiss between two married strangers on the day news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches a small Ohio town. One character’s secret mirrors a real-life revelation about a grandmother who maintained a decades-long affair. The story traces how a single mistake becomes a sustained secret sustained by repeated lies, and how those lies reshape identities and relationships. The narrative follows multiple generations to show the emotional costs of concealment, the mechanics of self-deception, and the long shadow an affair casts over families and community life.
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