But if anything, it made me want to write it more. So I took about a three-month break from writing this book. And by January, I was diagnosed with autoimmune Type 1 diabetes. And then I got - my immune system attacked my thyroid and then my pancreas. I had a very intense illness called an autoimmune storm that started with shingles in my eye. We went on unemployment, and then I got sick. SIMON: As you say in the afterword, 2020 was a tough year for your family, wasn't it? I think forgiveness is hard, and I think many of us turn to faith and friends, therapists, whatever, to help guide us to a more solid feeling of forgiveness. And then in the morning she wakes up, and she's not sure she forgives him anymore.Īnd I think that kind of mercurial quality of forgiveness - to me, I think that's really honest. As I started to think about it, and with him asking her to forgive him, I started to wonder, well, what does it feel like? And do you ever really forgive someone, or do you just kind of move on?Īnd there's one night where she thinks she has forgiven him, and she feels this warm rush go through her body, but she doesn't tell him. I mean, I thought I knew what forgiveness entailed, and then I was wrong. ![]() SIMON: I had not thought about it in depth until I read this book. I don't know what you think, Scott, but what is forgiveness, really? I mean, that was another thing I wanted to explore. Alice is suspicious of what we call forgiveness, isn't she? SIMON: Pete keeps asking Alice for - to forgive him for his affair. That was the thing, like, this question of, will this marriage make it? And what happens when you're stuck together, and it's COVID, and you retire to your unwinterized summer house, and your marriage is on the rocks? And in our family, it was actually a time of knitting back together, and that really interested me. I felt like I was aware of friends who were struggling or feeling imprisoned or feeling like I need this over. And I think the pandemic hastened a real reckoning with that question, honestly. SHETTERLY: I've always been preoccupied by divorce and marriages that fall apart. And there's no way of leaving those problems behind in Manhattan. And, of course, without giving away too much, at the heart of the story is the fact that this is a marriage that is in many ways coming apart, and then Pete and Alice have to go off together with their children. SIMON: You know, you can see someone about that now. So we've all, in our house, been living with Pete and Alice for quite a bit. And then I woke up the next morning, and she was in my head telling me the next page. And the entire first page of the book downloaded into my head, and I trundled upstairs in the dark and went into my office and sat down with a pad of paper and just wrote down everything she had said. What - I was interested in what about their lives prompted them to want to find refuge here in Maine.Īnd then all of a sudden, I'm standing at the fridge, and this voice came to me, and it was undeniably not mine. We didn't have enough ventilators, so we were really paying attention to this influx of people whom we perceived to have more privilege than many of us here in Maine have but who were nonetheless fleeing. And Maine is a poor and aging state, and we don't have many hospital beds. ![]() For a little bit there, I'd go out running, and I'd see Massachusetts and New York and New Jersey license plates in my home state of Maine. SHETTERLY: My character of Alice came to me in April of 2020. So we'll cue the spooky music while you tell us what happened. SIMON: You say in an author's note that in April 2020, a voice came to you. Thanks so much for being with us.ĬAITLIN SHETTERLY: Thank you so much for having me. ![]() She's also editor in chief of Frenchly, the online site for French cultural news, and joins us from Freeport, Maine. They repaired their second home in Maine to feel safer from COVID, but they take along all their resentments, challenges and love.Ĭaitlin Shetterly is the author of the new novel "Pete And Alice In Maine." Her work may be familiar from This American Life. Their marriage is rocked by Pete's cheating and then COVID. Pete is in finance Alice, a playwright whose career has been delayed by caring for their two children, Sophie and Iris. Some people kind of like the pandemic - not illness, worry and feeling trapped, but having your children close by and everything from bread, radicchio, milk, or oat milk, to toothpicks delivered - people like Pete and Alice, a married New York City couple.
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