The Gulf of Lions

"What a deliciously irresistible novel! This book is a five-star read. I guarantee you'll love it." -- Elin Hilderbrand

"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

From the acclaimed author of Pete and Alice in Maine comes a standalone and evocative sequel 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. In France, she finds out what it means to fully live.

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 beautiful meditation on womanhood, personhood, exploration, survival and sexual awakenings, The Gulf of Lions is a breathtaking and emotionally resonant story that plumbs the eternal question: What, in the end, will keep a family from falling apart?

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

Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Orion, Elle, Self, the Boston Globe, Medium, LitHub, Romper, and on Oprah.com, as well as on This American Life, Hidden Brain, Studio 360, Weekend Edition and various other public radio shows. She an editor-at-large for 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. Caitlin is passionately committed to helping preserve, in every way she can, the peace of wild things. www.caitlinshetterly.com