Willow D’Agata’s parents had always been distant. Then they’re gone. “Is it my fault?” wonders the lonely young woman, who feels imprisoned by a mansion built for four generations.

The predator entrusted with her protection intensifies Willow’s isolation, even as she fills her home with beguiling ladies and wealthy—sometimes dangerous—men.

Running parallel to Willow’s dark coming of age story is that of Fortunato “Fang the First” D’Agata, her great-grandfather. Banished by his mother as a boy, he mourns his lost family while striving for a life of splendor.

Willow inherits the consequences of the partnership Fortunato forms as an ambitious young man at the advent of Prohibition. Her vow to preserve Fortunato’s legacy costs Willow dearly, compelling her silence, even when the heroic man of her dreams asserts that in an interrogation, she’d tell him everything.

Can Willow break the cycle of control exerted over her kin for nearly seven decades?

Set in a fictional lakeside community in Central Ohio, this sweeping saga explores power, complicity, trauma, and chosen family.

Fans of The Women, The Spectacular, The Briar Club, and Lessons in Chemistry will cheer for the morally complex matriarchs of Emerald Eyes.

Caroline’s debut novel will be published on September 15 by Aphrodite Media and can be preordered now.