Women and Children First
Elizabeth Strout’s Anything is Possible meets Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You in Alina Grabowski’s Women and Children First, a breathtaking literary debut that unwinds the private lives of ten women as they confront tragedy in a small Massachusetts town.
ISBN
9781638930785
Language
English
Page count
320
Edition
Hardcover
Sale date
January 16, 2024
Dimensions
6 x 9
About the Book
Nashquitten, MA, is a decaying coastal enclave that not even tourist season can revive, full of locals who have run the town’s industries for generations. So, when a young woman dies at a house party, the circumstances around her death suspiciously unclear, the tight-knit community of Nashquitten is shaken. As a mother grieves her daughter, a teacher her student, a best friend her confidante, the events around this tragedy become a lightning rod: blame is cast, secrets are buried deeper. Some are left to pick up the pieces, while others turn their backs, and all the while, a truth about that dreadful night begins to emerge.
Told through the eyes of ten local women, Grabowski’s Women and Children First is an exquisite portrait of grief and a powerful reminder of life’s interconnectedness. Touching on womanhood, class, and sexuality, ambition, disappointment, and tragedy, this novel is a stunning rendering of love and loss, and a bracing lesson from a phenomenal new literary talent that no one walks this earth alone.
Alina Grabowski
Alina Grabowski’s work has appeared in Story, The Masters Review, Joyland, and Day One. She earned her MFA from Vanderbilt, and has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. She was a 2019 Emerging Writer Fellow at Aspen Summer Words. She lives in Austin, Texas.