Pete and Alice in Maine by Caitlin Shetterly (PB)

When a marriage cracks open during a global crisis, where do you run? For Alice, it’s to the rocky coast of Maine—trading New York City’s chaos for what she hopes will be sanctuary. But Caitlin Shetterly’s powerful debut novel reveals that you can’t outrun yourself, even when the world is falling apart.

Pete and Alice in Maine captures the spring of 2020 with unflinching honesty: the pandemic’s uncertainty, the hostility of locals protecting their territory, the claustrophobia of quarantine. Alice arrives in Maine reeling from her husband’s betrayal, seeking refuge with her two children. Instead, she finds herself trapped—not just by suspicious neighbors, but by the imprisoning structure of her own life. Stripped down to bare survival, she can no longer ignore how lost she’s become: as a wife, as a mother, as herself.

Richard Russo calls it “gripping,” while the New York Times Book Review praises its “subtle grace, a quality of light and shadow worthy of a Bergman film.” New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline describes it as “a tender, big-hearted, clear-eyed portrait of a marriage, and a family, in crisis.”

This is literary fiction that doesn’t flinch—examining betrayal, fear, and the mundane heartaches of everyday life with remarkable clarity. Shetterly asks the hardest question: Is what keeps a family safe the same thing that keeps them together? Perfect for readers who loved The Great Believers or Fleishman Is in Trouble, this debut explores what happens when crisis forces us to confront the truths we’ve been avoiding.

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