Amy and Isabelle — Elizabeth Strout

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother, and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's sexual secrets.

“A novel of shining integrity and humor, about the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life.” -- Alice Munro, Nobel Prize-winning author

Before there was Olive Kitteridge, there was Amy and Isabelle…

In most ways, Isabelle and Amy are like any mother and her 16-year-old daughter, a fierce mix of love and loathing exchanged in their every glance. That they eat, sleep, and work side by side in the gossip-ridden mill town of Shirley Falls -- a location fans of Strout will recognize from her critically acclaimed novel, The Burgess Boys -- only increases the tension. And just when it appears things can't get any worse, Amy's sexuality begins to unfold, causing a vast and icy rift between mother and daughter that will remain unbridgeable unless Isabelle examines her own secretive and shameful past.

A Reader's Guide is included in this powerful first novel by the author who brought Olive Kitteridge to millions of readers.