You Could Be Happy Here

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. ​

You Could be Happy Here is a story of identity, belonging, and of opening your heart to a deeper understanding of kinship and home. 

After earning a BA from UC Santa Cruz and a Masters from City University of New York, Erin Van Rheenen left the US to see the world. She ended up in Costa Rica, where she lived for several years, soaking up the green and researching her relocation guide, Living Abroad in Costa Rica and her children’s book, The Manatee’s Big Day.​ Her work has been anthologized and published in Bellevue Literary Review, Atlas Obscura, BBC Travel, Fiction, The Sun, and Best Women’s Travel Writing. ​For ten years, she was Senior Writer at The Exploratorium, a science museum. ​Erin lives in San Francisco.