Alison Wisdom

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Massachusetts

A Novel

With echoes of The Virgin Suicides and The Fates Will Find Their Way, Alison Wisdom's debut novel is the story of one teenage girl's unlikely indoctrination and the reverberations in the tight-knit community she leaves behind. Alice Lange's neighbors are proud to know her--a high-achieving student, cheerleader, and all-around good citizen, she's a perfect emblem of their sunny neighborhood. The night before she's expected to be crowned Homecoming Queen, though, she commits an act of vandalism, then disappears, following a magnetic stranger named Wesley to a bungalow in another part of the state. There, he promises, Alice can be her true self, shedding the shackles of conformity. At the bungalow, however, she learns that four other young women seeking enlightenment and adventure have already followed him there. Her new lifestyle is intoxicating at first, but as Wesley's demands on all of them increase, the house becomes a pressure cooker--until one day they reach the point of no return. Back home, the story of Alice's disappearance and radicalization is framed by the first-person plural chorus of the mothers who knew her before, who worry about her, but also resent the tear she made in the fabric of their perfect world, one that exposes the question: Isn't suburbia a kind of cult unto itself? Combining the sharp social critique of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere with the elegiac beauty of Emma Cline's The Girls, this is a fierce literary debut from a writer to watch.

We Can Only Save Ourselves

334777b5-e4ac-419a-9eba-6554170e55cf-1

North Carolina

The acclaimed author of We Can Only Save Ourselves returns with an urgent and unsettling story that journeys into the heart of religious fanaticism and cult behavior as it probes one woman's struggle to define life on her own terms.

"Here comes trouble," Rosemary's high school English teacher used to say whenever he saw her. Rosemary has often felt like trouble, and now at thirty-two, her marriage to her college sweetheart, Paul, is crumbling. In a last-ditch attempt to restore it, she agrees to give herself over to a newly formed Christian sect in central Texas, run by charismatic young pastor Papa Jake. 

While Paul acclimates quickly to the small town of Dawson and the church's insistence on a strict set of puritanical rules, Rosemary struggles to fit in. She finds purpose only when she's called upon to help Julie, a new mother in the community, who is feeling isolated and lost.

Then the community is rocked by a series of fires which take some church members' homes and nearly take their lives, but which Papa Jake says are holy and a representation of God's will. 

As the fires spread, and Julie is betrayed in a terrible way, Rosemary begins to question the reality of her life, and wonders if trouble will always find her--or if she'll ever be able to outrun it. 

The Burning Season

92695227-137d-49ff-a711-6e42fcdbad35-1

South Carolina

New York

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

North Dakota

"Alison Wisdom's addictive, down-the-rabbit-hole debut reads like The Girls by way of The Virgin Suicides, with an extra dash of Cheever's unsettling suburbia. The result is sinister and surprising: a novel I couldn't put down, and one that I kept thinking about long after I'd reached its unexpected, chilling end." --Emily Temple, author of The Lightness

One of Newsweek, Bustle, and LitHub's Most Anticipated Books and Goodreads' "Debut Novels to Discover in 2021," We Can Only Save Ourselves is the story of one teenage girl's unlikely indoctrination and the reverberations in the tight-knit community she leaves behind.

Alice Lange's neighbors are proud to know her--a high-achieving student, cheerleader, and all-around good citizen, she's a perfect emblem of their sunny neighborhood. The night before she's expected to be crowned Homecoming Queen, though, she commits an act of vandalism, then disappears, following a magnetic stranger named Wesley to a bungalow in another part of the state. There, he promises, Alice can be her true self, shedding the shackles of conformity.

At the bungalow, however, she learns that four other young women seeking enlightenment and adventure have already followed him there. Her new lifestyle is intoxicating at first, but as Wesley's demands on all of them increase, the house becomes a pressure cooker--until one day they reach the point of no return.

Back home, the story of Alice's disappearance and radicalization is framed by the first-person plural chorus of the mothers who knew her before, who worry about her, but also resent the tear she made in the fabric of their perfect world, one that exposes the question: Isn't suburbia a kind of cult unto itself?



Combining the sharp social critique of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere with the elegiac beauty of Emma Cline's The Girls, this is a fierce literary debut from a writer to watch.

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Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

The Burning Season

Alison Wisdom

The Burning Season

Alison Wisdom

The Burning Season

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

The Burning Season

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

The burning season

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

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Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

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The Burning Season

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The Burning Season

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The Burning Season

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

The Burning Season

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves

Alison Wisdom

The burning season

Alison Wisdom

We Can Only Save Ourselves