Overview

An ex-actress, her son, and his boyfriend flee the scorched California landscape in this “wonderfully engaging tale of both family and the underside of fame.” —Natalie Jenner, international-bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society

Iris Flynn is an acerbic, self-sufficient seventy-three-year-old widow with a minor past as a B-list actress and a streamlined kitchen inspired by Marie Kondo. But her composed and simplified existence is disrupted when her son Frank lands on her doorstep after his rental home is destroyed in a wildfire, the latest in a string of personal setbacks for Frank. He arrives with Logan, his young and handsome boyfriend, a featured extra on a teen soap opera with a loyal Instagram following.

Soon, news from Iris’s estranged family in Maine forces everyone out of their comfort zone. Iris convinces Frank and Logan to travel with her to the potato farm from which she made a quick getaway fifty years earlier, unleashing a funny and poignant family saga about secrets, forgiveness, and the shifting map of the human heart. Underburn is an extraordinary story about family resilience, missed connections, and second chances that assures us it’s sometimes okay to create our own Hollywood endings.