Coming Soon!

How far would you go—geographically and emotionally—to find your true home?

Advance praise

A brilliant debut and a beautiful tale of personal discovery, with travelers’ insights and natural history tidbits that made me laugh out loud. But be warned: This book may change forever how you think about family and belonging.

—Pat Murphy, Nebula Award winner and author of The Adventures of Mary Darling

About the book

Lucy—single, childless, in her thirties—studies insects and ecosystems to try to make sense of human behavior. But she is mystified by a series of events that shatter her idea of who she is and where she belongs. Her mother dies prematurely, her sister claims the Northern California family home, and Lucy learns that her biological father is apparently a Costa Rican they knew when the family spent summers in the coastal village of Palmita.

Reeling, disinherited, and recently demoted at work, Lucy heads south in search of this phantom father and the land he may have bequeathed her. But he is nowhere to be found, and none of the locals seem to remember her. The dreamy, off-grid paradise she recalls from childhood has become a hard-edged town leery of hotel-building, forest-razing outsiders. Is Lucy an interloper, too? Or can she rise to the challenge: rethink her place in the world, open her heart, and expand her notion of kinship and home?

About the author and the idea for the book

I’m Erin Van Rheenen. I write fiction and nonfiction that explores family dynamics, cultural difference, and the question of how many landscapes we can we hold in our heart at any given time.

You Could Be Happy Here is inspired by my appreciation of Latin America. Born in Oregon, schooled in Santa Cruz and New York City, my passion for place really took hold in the southern reaches of the Americas. I learned Spanish as a child in Guatemala, and lived for years as an adult in Ecuador and Mexico. Later, after a divorce sent me reeling, I moved to Costa Rica, looking for adventure and a fresh start. Turned out, I also ended up researching my relocation guide, Living Abroad in Costa Rica (Avalon Travel Publishing) and The Manatee’s Big Day, a bilingual, science-based children’s book. I’ve contributed to many travel and live-abroad guides, and have been interviewed on radio and television as an expert on Costa Rica and relocating abroad.

My work has been anthologized and published in many newspapers, magazines, and websites, including Bellevue Literary Review, Atlas Obscura, BBC Travel, Fiction, The Sun, and Best Women’s Travel Writing.

If you buy via the links on my site, I earn a small commission, which I’ll put in my mezcal fund.