About the Author

Monica Wood is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright. Her novel The One-in-a-Million Boy has been translated into twenty languages. When We Were the Kennedys, a memoir, was a New England bestseller, Oprah magazine summer-reading pick, and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award and the Maine Literary Award. Wood is the 2019 recipient of the Maine Humanities Council Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities, and the 2018 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award for contributions to the literary arts. Her novel Meanwhile will be published in May 2023 by Mariner.

Cathie Pelletier is the author of eleven novels, including The Funeral Makers, a New York Times Notable Book. The Washington Post calls her "An ambitious, fearless novelist...one of the funniest novelists at work in this country."

Reviews

Praise for Any Bitter Thing
"Deserves a place on the shelf with modern classics such as John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany and Richard Russo's Empire Falls....the story is full of suspense and surprise." --Maine Sunday Telegram "Wood illuminates the grace in the average and the everyday, the miracles that lie within the ordinary life....[An] intimate exploration of love and faith, betrayal and penance." --San Francisco Chronicle "In prose as fresh and lovely as a Maine summer evening . . . Wood's story unassumingly builds in power, right up to its moving final page." --Publishers Weekly "This emotional story is filled with crisp, rich details that linger in the memory....Wood's stirring domestic drama is full of surprises as it explores the weighty themes of religion, perceived innocence, and the corrosive quality of best intentions." --Booklist