Shae, Mesha Maren
Shae, Mesha Maren
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Shae
A Novel

Author: Mesha Maren

Narrator: Kira Fixx

Unabridged: 5 hr 57 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/21/2024


Synopsis

From “a highest-order storyteller of Southern noir” (Electric Literature), a queer coming-of-age novel about addiction, belonging, and loving a place that doesn't always love you back.

When sixteen-year-old Shae meets Cam, who is new to their small town in West Virginia, she thinks she has found someone who is everything she has ever wanted in a companion. The two become fast friends, and then more. And when Shae ends up pregnant, Cam begins a different transition—trying on clothes that Shae can no longer fit into and using female pronouns. Shae tries to be fully supportive as Cam becomes the person she wants and needs to be.

After a traumatic C-section and the birth of their daughter, Eva, Shae is given opioids to manage the intense pain. During the first year of Eva’s life, Shae’s dependence shifts from pain management to addiction, and her days begin to revolve around getting more pills. In the heart of West Virginia, opioids are dispensed as freely as candy, and Shae is just one of many to fall victim to addiction. Meanwhile, as Cam continues to transition, she embraces new relationships and faces the reality of being a trans woman in rural America.

Shae is as much about these two young women as it is about the home they both love despite its limitations. Following the acclaimed Sugar Run and Perpetual West, this is Mesha Maren’s most intense and intimate novel yet.

About Mesha Maren

Mesha Maren's short stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, the Oxford American, Southern Culture, Hobart, Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2015 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, a 2014 Elizabeth George Foundation grant, an Appalachian Writing Fellowship from Lincoln Memorial University, and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation. She is the 2018-2019 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and also serves as a National Endowment of the Arts Writing Fellow at the Beckley Federal Correctional Institution.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kristy on September 02, 2024

This story is horrifyingly brutal yet wonderfully written, taking you directly to small town West Virginia. Sixteen-year-old Shae thinks she's found a new friend in Cam, who is a year her senior, when they meet at school. Soon she and Cam are hanging out, listening to music, and parking by the town......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on March 31, 2024

Once again Maren has given us a story of queer life in West Virginia. This is a short and simple story, the kind that makes no attempt to hide how things are going to end up. The plain prose fits our first person narrator, Shae, who is 16 as the novel begins. A lot of things in this story are quiet,......more

Goodreads review by Salty on May 24, 2024

Residing in a small West Virginia town, sixteen year old Shae is a shy high school teen who feels awkward around her peers. One day she meets Cam, a newcomer to the town, who lives with his grandfather. The two become close and soon enough, Shae finds out she's pregnant. Though Cam is supportive dur......more

Goodreads review by Brianna on September 27, 2024

This book is real and raw. Having grown up in the same region as the book's setting (Eastern Kentucky, close to the border of West Virginia), I feel this was an authentic exploration of sexuality, substance misuse, culture, parenthood and survival in Appalachia. I found myself attached to Shae (the......more

Goodreads review by Asha on January 01, 2024

It was great! I read it fast. Very much a page turner. The style of this book is more similar to Mesha’s first book Sugar Run than her second Perpetual West. The character development of both Shae and Cam drew me right in. When I wasn’t reading the book I was wondering what these characters were doi......more


Quotes

“Mesha Maren paints a vivid, unforgettable portrait of two young women—one cis and one trans—living in West Virginia and trying to break free from the confinements of gender, class, and sexuality. Mesha Maren is a visionary storyteller and her prose is incandescent. The sentences shimmer with precision, elegance, and grit. It’s the kind of book that gets under your skin. I couldn't put it down. Shae is a beautiful, big-hearted novel about love, desire, and daring to be one’s self. I will be thinking about the characters for a long time.”—Carter Sickels, author of The Prettiest Star

“Maren brilliantly gives voice to a New South, introducing us to two unforgettable characters whose journeys echo the struggles of queer people across the country. This book is essential for the new queer canon emerging from Southern writers. I can’t wait to put this in the hands of so many people who need it and will no doubt see themselves in this beautiful narrative.”—Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased and All the World Beside

“An expansive, quietly devastating novel that fearlessly explores queer love, motherhood and the siren call of addiction."—Jenny Offill, author of Weather

Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2024

“Most Anticipated Queer Adult Fiction, January-June 2024” - LGBTQ Reads

“Maren is an astute and indispensable chronicler of Appalachian queerness.” 
 —Electric Literature