Cover of the novel 'A Good Animal' by Sara Maurer, featuring a pastoral landscape with a sunset, trees, a barn, and a flock of flying birds under a partly cloudy sky.

A heart-wrenching coming-of-age debut novel by a stunning new voice in fiction, for readers of Barbara Kingsolver and Ann Patchett.

A GOOD ANIMAL

“A stunning, unforgettable, and deeply American novel.”
— Julia Phillips, National Book Award finalist and author of BEAR and DISAPPEARING EARTH

About A GOOD ANIMAL

In the farm country outside Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan—a border town where life moves slow and dreams run fast—most kids want out. Not Everett Lindt. He’s set on staying put, rebuilding his family’s sheep farm, and carving a future from the land he loves. Then he meets Mary, a new girl in town with restless energy and bigger plans. When she discovers she's pregnant, Everett sees a life together; Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. Together, they make an impulsive choice—one that could change everything.

Tense, lyrical, and deeply felt, this unforgettable coming-of-age debut breathtakingly captures the ache of first love, the beauty and brutality of rural life, and how one decision can echo through generations and shape who we become.
Advertisement for the novel "A Good Animal" by Sara Maurer, showing the book cover with a pastoral scene at sunset, and text indicating the book is on sale on February 24 and 26, available for pre-order through St. Martin's Press.

Advanced praise for A GOOD ANIMAL

  • "An aching, exquisite story of young love, curtailed by a country where our freedoms have to be bought, A GOOD ANIMAL is a stunning, unforgettable, and deeply American novel. It is about sex and strength and hard, satisfying work; about dreams and opportunities and what we lose, have lost, are still losing. It’s about where we come from, where we’re going, and who breaks our hearts along the way."

    Julia Phillips, National Book Award finalist, author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

  • "A gorgeous waltz of a novel, written with great tenderness for the rural ways of life and insight into the human condition."

    Jung Yun, author of O Beautiful and Shelter

  • "From the first sentence of her debut novel Sara Maurer transports us to picturesque Sault Ste. Marie, where the rural way of life feels frozen in time. Everett Lindt is certain of his future there, even after he meets a new girl in town with big dreams. With pitch perfect prose Maurer captures the intensity of Everett’s first love, and the haunting mistakes he makes despite his good intentions."

    Tracey Lange, bestselling author of We Are the Brennans, The Connellys of County Down, and What Happened to the McCrays?

  • "Debut author Sara Maurer storms out of the literary gates with a deeply felt story that explores how we come to learn what love is. This soul-stirring, elegiac novel reads like a classic and builds to a conclusion that will leave the reader breathless."

    Christina Clancy, bestselling author of The Snowbirds

  • "A nostalgic and poignant coming of age novel that takes place in rural Michigan, A Good Animal will hook you the moment you read the haunting prologue. Maurer juxtaposes a teen's yearning to grow up against not being fully ready for adult responsibilities—along with the contrast of beauty and joy against the sometimes harsh realities of life and death on a farm—and bottles it up into a story of all the ways love shapes us that you won’t want to put down.”

    Kristin Koval, author of Penitence

  • "A GOOD ANIMAL is a wonderful debut novel filled with tremendous heart and an authentic appreciation for place and the natural world. Maurer's prose reminded me of the great Bobbie Gentry's songwriting, Michael Perry's rural writings, or the poetry of Ted Kooser: gritty, soulful, and uniquely country. You won't be able to stop reading this deeply affecting story of star-crossed love and hometown heartbreak."

    Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and A Forty Year Kiss

  • "Sara Maurer’s beautifully written novel is humane, frank, and informed by a strong sense of place. It is a quiet, honest story about human needs, desires, and choices written with nuance, kindness, and grit. Reading A GOOD ANIMAL is an immersive experience; this reader emerged caring for a widened circle of fellow travelers on the earth."

    Ellen Airgood, author of Tin Camp Road and South of Superior

  • "Sara Maurer poignantly depicts the harshness and beauty of farm life in northern Michigan. A GOOD ANIMAL is a sensitive coming-of-age story that contrasts the love of home and the land, against the urge to escape and experience new horizons. Older teens and adult readers will enjoy spending time with these characters and deliberating and discussing their choices."

    Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller

  • "Sara Maurer's A GOOD ANIMAL is haunting, beautiful, and true. It's a novel about first love, family, small towns, and sheep farming, and there are images in this book so vivid and stunning that I'm not quite sure I'll ever escape them. Or want to. More than anything, it's a novel about a specific time and place that is so fully rendered and alive that I swear to you the pages hum."

    Travis Mulhauser, author of The Trouble Up North and Sweetgirl

  • If I were able to mate Jim Harrison's True North and Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, the gritty, gorgeous result would be Sara Maurer's A GOOD ANIMAL. Set on a sheep farm against the wilds of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, readers are instantly transported into the emotional tumult and uncertainty of this rural coming-of-age story. If you've ever found yourself transported by a book to an unfamiliar place, and felt right at home, you know what to expect from Maurer's debut. With a pace that is propulsive but steady, a plotline that is suspenseful but deeply earnest and wholehearted, and characters who leap from the page, book lovers from every genre will be unable to put this one down. Stunning.

    Jessilynn Norcross, McLean & Eakin