Maine/new England

When a body washes up on the shore of a harbor island, LT Nichols, Laurel, Maine's chief of police, discovers that it's the son of Laurel's most noteworthy summer resident, Randolph Grimes, the US Secretary of Commerce. The case is deemed too big for the smalltown Nichols. A United States marshal is flown in from Washington. When she arrests one of Laurel's native sons for murder, Nichols has his doubts. He launches his own investigation. A host of federal agents line up to shut him down.

And that's when the real trouble starts.

"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 lifein 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.

When twin teenage sisters go missing at the height of tourist season, Laurel, Maine Police Chief Tim Nichols' summer of patrolling beaches and leading parades comes to an abrupt end. A desperate search for the girls takes him from seaside bars and abandoned farms to million dollar estates and cobbled-together shacks. 

As Nichols doggedly unearths scraps of information and deciphers a steady flow of half-truths, he finds a darkness coursing through ts Laurel's sunny, tree-lined streets. He races to piece together the girls' disappearance, knowing that doing so may tear the façade off his postcard-perfect town.