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Jenna Bush Hager says her August 2026 Read With Jenna pick, \u201cSunlight Finds You\u201d by Laura Moriarty, is \u201cthe perfect summer read.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is propulsive and drenched in light, just like the title,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The novel opens in 1949 in St. Petersburg, Florida. There, 17-year-old Nora meets and falls in love with Leonard, a New York transplant.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis parents, and a secret, separate them which leads Nora through a twisty path towards adulthood, heartbreak and eventually, healing,\u201d Jenna said, calling this a book about \u201cforgiveness, both of ourselves and others, and love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moriarty is the author of multiple novels including \u201cThe Chaperone,\u201d which became a movie directed by \u201cDownton Abbey\u201d creator Julian Fellowes in 2018.<\/p>\n
With her latest, she always knew she wanted to write a love story \u2014 \u201ca big love story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot exactly a romance, but a story about the way love can change a person and alter the course of the life,\u201d she tells TODAY.com.<\/p>\n
Moriarty says she also \u201cknew pretty early\u201d that she wanted to set the novel in St. Petersburg in the 1950s. During WWII, soldiers passed through St. Petersburg on their way to Europe. Some returned permanently upon their return, turning St. Pete into a \u201cboom town,\u201d Moriarty explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really became this place of explosive growth and typically seeking the sun in good times after the war,\u201d Moriarty says.<\/p>\n
But the journey to \u201cSunlight Finds You\u201d was a long road, she says, because of her own health. Moriarty was diagnosed with cancer while writing the book and had to have her jaw almost completely reconstructed during treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt slowed me down. I\u2019m so, so happy to be on the other side of it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Moriarty says her procedure helped her connect more deeply to Nora and her troubles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started thinking about you know how going through something isolating and hard can make you more vulnerable for a while before it makes wiser,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She spoke to her mom, who lived in Florida in the 1950s, for context about Laura\u2019s life and the choices women in that era had to face.<\/p>\n