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About Erin Van Rheenen
Erin Van Rheenen, MA, writes fiction and nonfiction that explores family dynamics, cultural difference, and the power of place. Her work has been anthologized and published in Bellevue Literary Review, Atlas Obscura, BBC Travel, Fiction, The Sun, and Best Women’s Travel Writing. She won the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society prize for best novel in manuscript, judged by novelist Oscar Hijuelos. Her work has been supported by Cottages at Hedgebrook, Community of Writers, and Hippocamp.
You Could Be Happy Here is inspired by Erin’s connection to Latin America. Born in Oregon, schooled in Santa Cruz and New York City, her passion for place really took hold in the Southern reaches of the Americas. She learned Spanish as a child in Guatemala, lived for years as an adult in Ecuador and Mexico, and was married to a Mexico City artist. After they divorced, she moved to Costa Rica, where she lived and traveled by herself while researching her best-selling relocation guide, Living Abroad in Costa Rica (Avalon Travel Publishing). She has contributed to many travel and live-abroad guides, and has been interviewed on radio and television as an expert on Costa Rica and relocating abroad.
Upcoming Events with Erin Van Rheenen
FICTION | $20
Trade Paper | 5.315” x 8.465”
ISBN: 9781960573476
Pub Date: 9/16/2025
You Could Be Happy Here: A Novel
by Erin Van Rheenen
Get it wherever great books are sold
How far would you go to find your true home?
Lucy—single, childless, in her thirties—studies insects and ecosystems, in part to make sense of human behavior. That hard-won insight is shattered when her mother dies prematurely, her sister claims the 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, Lucy heads south in search of this phantom father. 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 outsiders. Is Lucy an interloper, too? Or can she find a way to belong—rethink her place in the world and expand her notion of kinship and home?
Praise for You Could Be Happy Here
“...never goes where you think it's going, but always takes you someplace wonderful.”
–Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“Populated by a cast of colorful characters, and buoyed by the customs and culture of Costa Rica, You Could Be Happy Here is a wonderfully insightful story of one woman's journey of discovery.
... an auspicious debut novel!”
–Gail Tsukiyama, national best-selling author of The Samurai’s Garden
“A surprising novel about family and what it means to belong. I found myself rooting for Lucy every step of the way.”
—Julia Scheeres, NYT bestselling author of Jesus Land
