“What lasts in this world?”

It’s 1935 in the once-thriving summer town of Cascade and Desdemona Spaulding, a gifted, Paris-trained artist, has made a mariage sans amour to provide a roof over the head of her dying father and save the family’s renowned Shakespeare theater.  When the state threatens to flood Cascade and build a reservoir, Dez comes up with an art project that just might save the town, but her discontent with her new life is growing, and complicated by her attraction to Jacob, a fellow artist. 

The Boston Globe: What do we have to give up to be whom we yearn to be? O’Hara’s richly satisfying new novel grapples with small town limitations vs. big city sparkle, as well as the twists and turns in life that can either make or derail us. What makes the story all the more engrossing is that it’s set against the eerie backdrop of 1930s Cascade, Mass., a town about to be flooded to make way for a reservoir. Cascade unfolds like a Shakespearean tragedy, with an ending you won’t see coming.