Duke Tate

The Architect: The Origin - Architect Duke Tate

Meg Summers is one of America's premier architects, designing some of most exquisite estates across the country, but ever since her sister Dawn had an affair with her former husband, Mick Drewford, a year ago, she has felt utterly and desperately alone. She is also bored with her job. She would much rather sketch fantasy drawings all day in her journal than be managing projects.

On a cool fall day in East Hampton, Meg finds a mysterious note in elegant cursive addressed to her tucked in the middle of a rare book on Hawaiian houses at her favorite bookstore, The Nook & Cranny. After much debate, she decides to follow the note's instructions to the Hawaiian island of Kauai where she is swept into a tantalizing world that is both mysterious and strange. The eccentric man who leads her there asks her to do the impossible: design an enormous dream building for the ages on his property.

Meg is reluctant to agree. But when the man shows her the land's mystical secret, she feels compelled to draw it. She gives in, immersing herself in the creative depths of her soul to draw one of the most interesting buildings she has ever imagined. Along the way, she is introduced to a team of architects and builders as strange and magical as the place she has cast herself into.

As time passes, she becomes entranced by her new surroundings and the wealthy man who brought her there, but she also longs for her old life, her home and her family.

A cross between The Lost Horizon and Alice in Wonderland, TLS 2020 Book of the year authors, Ken and Duke Tate's The Architect will leave you spellbound.