A Fortune of Sand, Built in Detroit

NYT bestselling author Ruta Sepetys to stop in Petoskey with her latest book

By Jillian Manning | May 23, 2026

It took bestselling author Ruta Sepetys almost exactly 15 years to publish her first adult novel, A Fortune of Sand, which explores the glitz and grit of the Prohibition Era in her hometown of Detroit and its suburbs.

“I’m passionate about the city of Detroit,” Sepetys says. “I just found that it was this uncombed historical wilderness, and I wanted to shine light in those dark corners.”

And boy, did she. Sepetys tells us that during her research phase, she reads a copy of a newspaper each day from that time period. That means that the little details of the book—a character who loses his eye to a popped champagne cork, a grandmother with umbrellas named after authoritarian leaders, and a woman obsessed with Christmas—all came from real stories in Detroit.

More sobering plot points are ripped from the headlines too: a gem heist at the Detroit Institute of Arts, kidnapping and murder among the automotive elite, and even women committed to asylums against their will.

“I often wonder, how much did The Great Gatsby have to do with creating a defining narrative of the 1920s, because we think of the ’20s as flappers and glamorous, but when I peeled back the layers, I found something much more frightening,” Sepetys says.

On May 31, Sepetys will appear at Crooked Tree Art Center in Petoskey (put on by McLean & Eakin Booksellers), one of a handful of tour stops in her native Michigan. The event will be in conversation with a moderator, but Sepetys is certain that everyone in the audience will have a story of their own to tell about Detroit—and she wants to hear it.

“History is so important,” she explains, “and we don’t want those stories to be swept under the rug.”

The Humans Behind the History

Sepetys is no stranger to digging into the past. Her historical fiction has made her a #1 New York Times bestseller and garnered invitations to present her books all over the world. The time periods she chooses might seem familiar, but the stories themselves always feel new and fresh.

“What draws me in is if I feel that there is an incomplete narrative or a preconception,” Sepetys says. “Beneath those—whether you call them false narratives or incomplete narratives—there are human beings who experience that history, and when we don’t know that history, we’re constantly misjudging one another.”

Understanding history began as a personal journey when Sepetys stepped away from a two-decade career in the music industry and sought to uncover the experiences of her own relatives from Lithuania during World War II. Her first novel, Between Shades of Gray, published in 2011 and tells the tale of a Lithuanian family taken by the Soviet secret police to a forced-labor camp in Siberia. The book was a hit and raked in accolades, including being named one of Kirkus Reviews “Best Young Adult Book of the Century.”

Next came Out of the Easy in 2013 (a 1950s New Orleans coming-of-age-slash-mystery); Salt to the Sea in 2016 (following refugees aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945); The Fountains of Silence in 2019 (unearthing the secrets of fascist Spain in the 1950s); and I Must Betray You in 2022 (set in Romania just before the fall of the Soviet Union).

Sepetys also wrote a New York Times bestselling middle grade novel, The Bletchley Riddle, with historian Steve Sheinkin about siblings who find themselves ensnared in the Enigma code-breaking world of WWII.

And let’s not forget You: The Story, a book on writing craft that delves into how memories and life experience can strengthen your writing.

A Fortune of Sand

But A Fortune of Sand was a different beast. For one thing, it is her first book for adults.

“The Prohibition Era setting of this in the 1920s really called for an adult cast of characters,” Sepetys says. “Also, I’m interested in a lane of historical fiction that explores things that were once vital but have now vanished.”

The Detroit automotive industry certainly fits that bill. The novel follows the Lennox family, who has made their money in windshields, but three generations in, is rotting from the inside out. Corruption, bribery, blackmail—no bridge is too far for Duncan Lennox, whose thug-adjacent, nouveau riche style is an insult to his hardworking Scottish father and several of his own children.

Most of the novel centers on Marjorie Lennox, the whimsical youngest daughter and aspiring fashion designer whose “truth fairy” tendencies make her a liability to a family with too many secrets. Tired of being misunderstood and eager to prove her worth, Marjorie enrolls in an exclusive (and reclusive) artist residency. But some of the other women are…different, to say the least. And the doors are always locked, and more than one resident is convinced the building is haunted.

Sepetys says she wrote the book in a “style that’s deceptively fizzy. … And then all of a sudden, as you move through the story, I wanted the reader to feel like, ‘Wait, what’s going on?’ as if the lights were flickering.”

(Having gotten an advance copy of the book, we can confirm this is exactly what you’ll be feeling.)

We won’t give anything more away, but we will say that any Michigander will find plenty of Easter eggs, from mentions of the U.P. lumber boom to the launch of the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade to building the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. And if you, like so many of us scattered through the state, have a relative who worked in the automotive industry in the early 1900s, you’ll see plenty of clever (and sometimes cutting) depictions of families like the Fords and Dodges.

And speaking of Easter eggs, we’ll leave you with this one: The blue color on the cover is the exact Pantone shade of Honolulu Blue…the signature color of the Detroit Lions.

About the Event

Head to the Crooked Tree Arts Center theater (461 E. Mitchell St.) in Petoskey on Sunday, May 31, at 4pm to celebrate the release of A Fortune of Sand with Ruta Sepetys. Expect a conversation, signing, and wine and cheese. The event is free, though RSVPs are requested. Learn more at mcleanandeakin.com/event/2026-05-31/ruta-sepetys-fortune-sand.