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Wreck
Overview
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK - INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Wreck is a delight. What an absolute joy to be reunited with Rocky and her family, the characters we all fell in love with in Sandwich. Newman's prose is laugh-out-loud funny. It's also profound. I couldn't stop reading, even though I didn't want it to end."--J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Cliffs
"Wreck is the kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep--equal parts hilarious, sharp, and achingly sincere. I didn't just read it--I felt known by it. A luminous, laugh-out-loud triumph."--Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding People
The acclaimed bestselling author of Sandwich is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn't go as planned.
If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry--and relate.)
Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky's widowed father, has moved in.
It all couldn't be more ridiculously normal . . . until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them--and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won't affect them at all.
With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people--no matter how much you love them--are not always exactly who you want them to be.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780063453913
- ISBN-10: 0063453916
- Publisher: Harper
- Publish Date: October 2025
- Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.7 pounds
- Page Count: 224
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Readers who delighted in spending a summer week on Cape Cod with Rocky and her family in Catherine Newman’s 2024 novel, Sandwich, should be thrilled that she’s brought them back in Wreck. The good news for everyone else is that no prior acquaintance with this likable, readily recognizable family is required to enjoy a warmhearted story about the fragility of life and the bonds of affection that help us weather its most difficult moments. In her mid-50s, Rocky, a poster child for anxiety disorder, is back home in Western Massachusetts with Nick, her preternaturally patient husband of more than three decades, and their daughter, Willa, an aspiring neuroscientist. Following the death of his wife, Rocky’s 92-year-old father, Mort, has moved from New York City to the in-law apartment behind their house. Recently fired from writing an etiquette column, Rocky is now freelancing for magazines on weighty subjects—like spatchcocking a Thanksgiving turkey. But Rocky’s decidedly ordinary life is upended when she notices a rash on her leg that quickly spreads and, just as quickly, plunges her into a too-close encounter with the frustrations of the American health care system and health insurance business. Her intelligence and sarcastic wit make her the perfect mouthpiece for a litany of complaints about both that, though familiar, are still fresh and funny in Newman’s brisk telling. Rocky’s mysterious illness isn’t her only emotional challenge. The death of her son Jamie’s high school classmate in a railroad crossing accident sends her into a spiral of rumination on the tenuousness of our grip on those we hold most dear. Her “voyeuristic excavation of someone else’s tragedy” only becomes more obsessive when she discovers an unexpected personal connection to the event. As she demonstrated in Sandwich, Newman is unafraid to roll up her sleeves and wade into the blessed messiness of family life, presenting Rocky and her clan with both honesty and tenderness in all their complex ordinariness. “Life is a near-death experience,” Rocky muses near the end of the novel. “And death is a real-life one.” In this brief novel, Newman provides ample support for those claims. Wreck’s life-affirming conclusion will leave readers grateful for this helping of Rocky’s gentle wisdom and, almost certainly, hungry for more.
Readers who delighted in spending a summer week on Cape Cod with Rocky and her family in Catherine Newman’s 2024 novel, Sandwich, should be thrilled that she’s brought them back in Wreck. The good news for everyone else is that no prior acquaintance with this likable, readily recognizable family is required to enjoy a warmhearted story about the fragility of life and the bonds of affection that help us weather its most difficult moments. In her mid-50s, Rocky, a poster child for anxiety disorder, is back home in Western Massachusetts with Nick, her preternaturally patient husband of more than three decades, and their daughter, Willa, an aspiring neuroscientist. Following the death of his wife, Rocky’s 92-year-old father, Mort, has moved from New York City to the in-law apartment behind their house. Recently fired from writing an etiquette column, Rocky is now freelancing for magazines on weighty subjects—like spatchcocking a Thanksgiving turkey. But Rocky’s decidedly ordinary life is upended when she notices a rash on her leg that quickly spreads and, just as quickly, plunges her into a too-close encounter with the frustrations of the American health care system and health insurance business. Her intelligence and sarcastic wit make her the perfect mouthpiece for a litany of complaints about both that, though familiar, are still fresh and funny in Newman’s brisk telling. Rocky’s mysterious illness isn’t her only emotional challenge. The death of her son Jamie’s high school classmate in a railroad crossing accident sends her into a spiral of rumination on the tenuousness of our grip on those we hold most dear. Her “voyeuristic excavation of someone else’s tragedy” only becomes more obsessive when she discovers an unexpected personal connection to the event. As she demonstrated in Sandwich, Newman is unafraid to roll up her sleeves and wade into the blessed messiness of family life, presenting Rocky and her clan with both honesty and tenderness in all their complex ordinariness. “Life is a near-death experience,” Rocky muses near the end of the novel. “And death is a real-life one.” In this brief novel, Newman provides ample support for those claims. Wreck’s life-affirming conclusion will leave readers grateful for this helping of Rocky’s gentle wisdom and, almost certainly, hungry for more.