Pete and Alice in Maine: A Novel

Written by Caitlin Shetterly

Narrated by Eileen Stevens, Joe Knezevich and Sarah Naughton

“Gripping.”—Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls

“Shetterly’s debut achieves a subtle grace, a quality of light and shadow worthy of a Bergman film.”—Allegra Goodman, New York Times Book Review

""Pete and Alice in Maine is a tender, big-hearted, clear-eyed portrait of a marriage, and a family, in crisis—set during the plague years when the entire world was in crisis. As she investigates the insidious effect of lies, betrayal, fear, and anger, not to mention the mundane joys and wrenching heartaches of everyday life, Caitlin Shetterly gets to the heart of what it means to be a family.” — Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles

A powerful and beautifully written debut novel that intimately explores a fractured marriage and the struggles of modern parenthood, set against the backdrop of the chaotic spring of 2020.

Reeling from a painful betrayal in her marriage as the Covid pandemic takes hold in New York City, Alice packs up her family and flees to their vacation home in Maine. She hopes to find sanctuary—from the uncertainties of the exploding pandemic and her faltering marriage.

Putting distance between herself and the stresses and troubles of the city, Alice begins to feel safe and relieved. But the locals are far from friendly. Trapped and forced into quarantine by hostile neighbors, Alice sees the imprisoning structure of her life in this new predicament. Stripped down to the bare essentials of survival and tending to the needs of her two children, she can no longer ignore all the ways in which she feels limited and lost—lost in the big city, lost as a wife, lost as a mother, lost as a daughter and lost as a person.

As the world shifts around her and the balance in her marriage tilts, Alice and her husband, Pete, are left to consider if what keeps their family safe is the same thing as what keeps their family together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jul 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9780063242838

Caitlin Shetterly

Caitlin Shetterly is the author of Modified and Made for You and Me, and the editor of the bestselling Fault Lines: Stories of Divorce. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Orion, Elle, Self, and on Oprah.com, as well as on This American Life and various other public radio shows. She is the editor-in-chief of Frenchly, a French arts and culture online news magazine. A Maine native, she graduated with honors from Brown University and now lives with her two sons and husband in her home state. Pete and Alice in Maine is her first novel.