It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, without luggage, alone. Everyone in the lobby mistakes her for one of the wedding people at an impending wedding on the site, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t there for the big event.

Phoebe is there because she’s dreamed of coming for years. She hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is a nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.