First published 2020
Alma and her husband live an austere homesteading life in rural Vermont, raising children and tending sheep. When she impulsively begins an anonymous online correspondence with a charismatic writer, her carefully constructed existence starts to crack. Her digital flirtation becomes an escape from domestic constraints—but also a potential mechanism of self-destruction. As her correspondence intensifies, Alma risks exposing not just her own fragile inner world, but the delicate social fabric of her family and community. What begins as a private rebellion threatens to demolish everything she has methodically built.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: domestic-constraints, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Vermont
Period: 21st-century
153 pages · Kindle Edition · Milkweed Editions
Content warnings: emotional-abuse