Elizabeth Strout

Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, their relationship brings disgrace to Amy's mother, Isabelle, and intensifies the shame she feels for her own past. In a fury, she lashes out at her daughter's beauty and then retreats into outraged silence. Mother and daughter remain at a distance. This conflict is surrounded by other dramas in the town of Shirley Falls - a teenage pregnancy, a UFO sighting, a missing child, and the trials of Fat Bev, the community's enormous (and enormously funny and compassionate) peacemaker.

Amy and Isabelle

Lindy

No, you couldn't blame these things on God. It was people, just ordinary, regular people, who did this to each other. People ruined other people's lives.

People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years. You took the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable.

All the love in the world couldn't prevent the awful truth: You passed on who you were.

Amy and Isabelle quotes

Join the club