The Stars Are Fire: A Novel [Paperback]

INSTANTNEW YORK TIMESBEST SELLER
Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Fiction 2017

From theNew York Timesbest-selling author ofThe Weight of WaterandThe Pilot's Wife(an Oprah's Book Club selection): an exquisitely suspenseful new novel about an extraordinary young woman tested by a catastrophic event--based on the true story of the largest fire in Maine's history

In October 1947, Grace Holland is experiencing two simultaneous droughts. An unseasonably hot, dry summer has turned the state of Maine into a tinderbox, and Grace and her husband, Gene, have fallen out of love and barely speak. Five months pregnant and caring for two toddlers, Grace has resigned herself to a life of loneliness and domestic chores. One night she awakes to find that wildfires are racing down the coast, closer and closer to her house.  Forced to pull her children into the ocean to escape the flames, Grace watches helplessly as everything she knows burns to the ground.  By morning, her life is forever changed: she is homeless, penniless, awaiting news of her husband's fate, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists. With courage and stoicism, Grace overcomes devastating loss and, through the smoke, is able to glimpse the opportunity to rewrite her own story.“Long before Liane Moriarty was spinning her “Big Little Lies,” Shreve was spicing up domestic doings in beachfront settings with terrible husbands and third-act twists. She still is, as effectively as ever, this time with a narrative literally lit from within.” 
—Mary Pols,New York Times Book Review
 

“Like her sensational best-selling 1998 novel The Pilot’s Wife, about a widow who discovers her pilot husband had a second family, The Stars Are Fire explores what happens in the secret spaces between married people…Masterful… lingers long after the last page is tul!