A SEASON OF PERFECT HAPPINESS by Maribeth Fischer - Spotlight


 A Season of Perfect Happiness (Dutton) fundamentally questions what makes a “good” mother, with a propulsive and heartrending portrayal of one woman’s efforts to find her voice.

Ten years after an unspeakable tragedy caused Claire to flee her hometown in Delaware, she finally feels content. She has a quiet, tidy life in Wisconsin, a place she picked at random for its shape on a map. Her careful existence centers on a simple plan: keep her social circle small and keep the past a secret.

But when she meets Erik—a lighthearted theater nerd who gives Claire more of a chance than she’s given herself in a long time—that plan seems increasingly impossible, especially after she finds herself emotionally entangled not only with Erik, but with his ex-wife, Annabelle; their three young children; and a small set of friends, the kind she’d always wanted to have around her. Life after the accident can be full of joy, Claire realizes—going on a date to see a thousand-pound pig at the state fair, giggling over obscure inside jokes with friends at a music gig, making smoothies while the kids wear their infamous cooking hats. Being a partner, a best friend, a mother.

But when a person from her past arrives, Claire’s worst mistake threatens her new life, and the deep friendships she’s made hang in the balance. If Claire chooses to share the parts of herself she has kept locked away for so long, will the family she has built still recognize her—and have a place for her? Or will everything she has spent the last decade working toward fall apart?


Maribeth Fischer is the author of three novels, The Language of Goodbye (Dutton, 2001), The Life You Longed For (Simon & Schuster, 2007), and A Season of Perfect Happiness (Dutton, forthcoming August 2024). Her books have been sold in the UK as well as Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal.

Fischer has received three Delaware Division of the Arts Fellowships for fiction and nonfiction, has published essays in such journals as The Iowa Review, The Yale Review, Creative Nonfiction and Fourth Genre, and has received two Pushcart Prizes for her essays: “Stillborn” (1994) and “The Fiction Writer” (2014). Her essays have been mentioned twice as “notable essays” in Robert Atwan’s Best American Essays series.

Maribeth founded the Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild (RBWG) in 2004, where she currently serves as Executive Director. She teaches classes for the guild in both novel writing and creative nonfiction.

She lives in Lewes, Delaware, with her husband, Victor Letonoff, a police officer and writer.

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