“Lucy by the Sea” by Elizabeth Strout

Photo: elizabethstrout.com 291 pages, published by Random House , ©2022 It hasn’t been an easy life for Lucy Barton, and it’s about to get harder. Lucy lives alone in New York City. She is a novelist, a single woman with two grown daughters, and the main character of the novel “Lucy by the Sea” by Elizabeth Strout. Lucy loves her girls dearly, and she doesn’t want them going through what she had to endure during her childhood: grinding poverty and an apathetic mother. Adulthood hasn’t been easier her ex-husband, William, had cheated on her and ultimately left her for the woman he cheated on her with. Spring is coming to New York, but so is a virus that is afflicting otherwise healthy people and killing many. William, a parasitologist, is familiar with the virus in ways laypeople cannot comprehend. He convinces his daughters to leave the city. As far as Lucy goes, William has plans for her to join him in a rented house in the town of Shirley, Maine . Lucy is apprehensive about leav...