Northshire Manchester: Caitlin Shetterly - The Gulf of Lions - with Caren McVicker

This is an in-person event at our Manchester, VT store!

Acclaimed author Caitlin Shetterly, author of Pete and Alice in Maine, will celebrate her irresistible new novel about a mother who, recovering from the trauma of breast cancer and a mastectomy, takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip across France with her two daughters. Shetterly will discuss the book with fellow novelist Caren McVicker.

Reconciling with her husband after a betrayal and recovering from a yearlong battle with breast cancer, Alice longs for an escape from the trials of everyday life. When the opportunity arises for a once-in-a-lifetime camping trip across France, she packs up her daughters, hoping it’s the new start she so desperately needs.

Alice, teenage Sophie, and young Iris begin their odyssey in the French Alps, entering a foreign world they did not know existed: beautiful people, luscious food, and sensual temptations. It’s a freeing experience—exploring the countryside, sleeping beneath the stars, reveling in the sights and scents of nature. For the first time since her diagnosis, Alice starts to feel alive, less afraid of dying, and less angry about her husband's affair.

But as the family continues south, traveling through Provence, where they camp on the Gulf of Lions, an area of the Mediterranean known for wild, roaring winds and purple fields of lavender, they start to unravel the yarn that binds them together. By the time they head to the charred Pyrenees, and then back across France to stay in a castle that sits on the confluence of two rivers, Alice worries that the trip might have been a disastrous and reckless mistake.

"A wry, aching, life-affirming novel about cancer, motherhood, and the mess of being human. Caitlin Shetterly writes with unsparing honesty and grace. A tour de force.” — Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Please Don't Lie and The Exiles

Caitlin Shetterly is the author of Modified, Made for You and Me, and Pete and Alice in Maine. She is the editor of the bestselling Fault Lines: Stories of Divorce. She won the Maine Literary Award for Modified in 2017.

Born in Oklahoma, Caren Simpson McVicker lives in Vermont with her hubby, a rescue pup, and a barn cat turned happy house kitty. Caren is also a mom to two incredible humans and is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. Henderson House is her first novel.

If you have questions about this or any other Northshire event, please write us at events@northshire.com.