Sign-In
Cart
The Gulf of Lions
Audio Book
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: May 19 2026
Language: English
What a deliciously irresistible novel! This book is a five-star read. I guarantee you'll love it. -- Elin Hilderbrand
A wry, aching, life-affirming novel about cancer, motherhood, and the mess of being human. Caitlin Shetterly writes with unsparing honesty and grace. A tour de force. -- Christina Baker Kline
From the acclaimed author of Pete and Alice in Maine comes a standalone and evocative sequel about a mother who, recovering from the trauma of breast cancer and a mastectomy, takes a once-in-a-lifetime trip across France with her two daughters. In France, she finds out what it means to fully live.
Reconciling with her husband after a betrayal and recovering from a yearlong battle with breast cancer, Alice longs for an escape from the trials of everyday life. When the opportunity arises for a once-in-a-lifetime camping trip across France, she packs up her daughters, hoping it's the new start she so desperately needs.
Alice, teenage Sophie, and young Iris begin their odyssey in the French Alps, entering a foreign world they did not know existed: beautiful people, luscious food, and sensual temptations. It's a freeing experience--exploring the countryside, sleeping beneath the stars, reveling in the sights and scents of nature. For the first time since her diagnosis, Alice starts to feel alive, less afraid of dying, and less angry about her husband's affair.
But as the family continues south, traveling through Provence, where they camp on the Gulf of Lions, an area of the Mediterranean known for wild, roaring winds and purple fields of lavender, they start to unravel the yarn that binds them together. By the time they head to the charred Pyrenees, and then back across France to stay in a castle that sits on the confluence of two rivers, Alice worries that the trip might have been a disastrous and reckless mistake.
A beautiful meditation on womanhood, personhood, exploration, survival and sexual awakenings, The Gulf of Lions is a breathtaking and emotionally resonant story that plumbs the eternal question: What, in the end, will keep a family from falling apart?
Also from
Shetterly, Caitlin
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I: American Tabloid, the Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
Ellroy, James
Hardcover
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Paperback
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1967-1972 (Loa #158): When She Was Good / Portnoy's Complaint / Our Gang / The Breast
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback