Portland author Susan Conley’s ‘Elsey Comes Home’ goes on sale Jan. 15.

Elsey, artist, wife and mother, has “lost herself,” and she’s well aware how that sounds. “…It seems overdone, and there are four hundred million people living in China on a dollar a day, so cry me a river.” She’s adrift and depressed and ashamed of her feelings, living a privileged life in Beijing with her husband Lukas and their 8- and 7-year old daughters.

“This cover art looks like the painting that would be on the bedroom wall of the girl in the picture. Very meta. Also, those colors make me think of when it was warm outside, which makes me feel slightly better than I did before.”

Browse our top picks celebrating the designers and illustrators we love.

January is the Monday of the year. After a revitalizing vacation, it’s when we face winter’s brutal cold while also returning to the daily grind. So what can serve as a reprieve from all that responsibility? A good book. This month, our mix of brand-new January 2019 books includes a heretofore-hidden Native American history, a wildly inventive poetry collection, and a risqué French thriller.

When Susan Conley was a teenager washing dishes at Phippsburg’s Sebasco Lodge, she would have laughed if you’d told her she’d be living and raising kids in Maine as an adult. “I was waiting for my ride south,” says the 51-year-old writer, whose newest novel, Elsey Come Home, hits shelves this month. “I was just twiddling my thumbs. I knew there was more out there.”

“A gem of a book! I’m going to recommend it to everybody!” — WBJC “BookNotes” with Emma Snyder, owner, The Ivy Bookshop. Listen to the radio review.

Beijing’s dumplings are perhaps the very greatest comfort food in the world, and they’re probably a big reason why you’ve landed in the capital city in the first place.

“Even within a few paragraphs of this exploration of motherhood and individuality, Elsey’s voice and emotional turbulence leap off the page.”

Described as “perfect” by Judy Blume herself, Susan Conley’s new novel follows Elsey, a woman living in Beijing struggling to reconcile her identities as painter, mother, expat, individual, and wife. When the novel opens, Elsey is drinking heavily and descending rapidly into misery. Her husband suggests she take part in a retreat, where she meets a handful of strangers who change her life. It’s a necessary look at the identity crisis women can face when the world forces them into boxes.