Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve (1946-2018) was an American novelist best known for character-driven literary fiction about ordinary lives cracked open by a single destabilizing event -- an affair, a drowning, a returning secret from the past. Raised in Dedham, Massachusetts and educated at Tufts University, she taught high school English and worked as a magazine journalist, including as deputy editor of Viva magazine in Nairobi, before publishing her first novel, Eden Close, in 1989 at age 42.

Shreve's breakthrough came a decade later when Oprah Winfrey chose The Pilot's Wife (1998) for her book club in 1999, turning Shreve into a consistent bestseller for the rest of her career. She went on to publish eighteen novels in total, frequently returning to the New Hampshire coastline as a setting; four of them -- Fortune's Rocks, Sea Glass, All He Ever Wanted, and A Wedding in December -- share a house and locale without forming a formal series. The Weight of Water (1997) was adapted into a 2000 film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and The Pilot's Wife into a 2002 television film.

Shreve died of cancer in March 2018 at her home in Newfields, New Hampshire, shortly after publishing what became her final novel, The Stars Are Fire (2017).