January Thaw

Maren Ashby flew to Newfoundland in January with her emotionally hollowed-out friend Diane. Two women answering a distress signal and running from the same wound: decades of subordinating their own wants to someone else's needs.

In a yellow row house on the St. John's harbor, the cold does what therapy could not. Diane breaks down crying in a church for the first time in years and starts writing letters to the husband she is beginning to realize she never loved. Maren meets Cal, a widowed marine biologist who studies murres and does not perform, and falls slowly and deliberately for the first man in years who is not a version of the one who nearly broke her.

Both women fly home with something they did not bring with them. One with a divorce lawyer on retainer. The other with a round-trip ticket and a man who promised her every year he has left. A dual-protagonist novel about thawing, witnessing, and the long slow work of believing you can still choose.