"One of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place."--The New York Times Book Review

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.