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The Butter House, by Sarah Gerard
ISBN 978-1-942387-19-0
List price: $12.00
Paperback / Fiction / 61 pages
Release date: April 18th, 2023
Launch Events:
- AWP Offsite Reading & Book Launch in Seattle, Washington (3/10/2023)
- Author Conversation & Book Launch in Portland, Oregon (3/12/2023)
About the Book
The Butter House follows a woman who moves from New York to a Florida bungalow with her boyfriend. She navigates contradictory landscapes of love and possession, nature and built-environment, empathy and sympathy. She becomes a surrogate caretaker for a colony of feral cats. She grows a garden. She interrogates what it means to care for somebody or something. This is a delicate story, but it chooses deliberate moments to scratch and bite with the ferocity of a territorial alley cat.
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About the Author
Sarah Gerard (she/they) is the author of the novels True Love (Harper, 2020) and Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio, 2015) and the essay collection Sunshine State (Harper, 2017). They are the recipient of a 2021 Lambda Literary Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Sarah’s short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in The New York Times, T Magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s, The Believer, Vice, Electric Literature, and the anthologies We Can’t Help It If We’re From Florida, One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism, Tampa Bay Noir, Erase the Patriarchy, and I Know What’s Best For You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom. Learn more about Sarah Gerard’s work on their website.
Praise for The Butter House
“April 2023 Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Books” —Lambda Literary
“Books We Can’t Wait to Read: April 2023” —Write or Die Magazine
“Books of the Month: April 2023 Edition” —Vol. 1 Brookyln
“Books of the Month: July 2023” —Independent Book Review
“A couple moves into the titular Butter House, and soon find themselves mired in the project of cat care. Sarah Gerard writes beautifully and precisely about the visceral, secretive feline landscape, and the possibilities that emerge when this world intersects with the human realm—challenging the couple at the center of The Butter House to renegotiate their relationship to care and what it means to feel at home.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
“[Sarah Gerard’s] prose is poetic, haunting, and pensive. As the girlfriend digs into the resistant earth and coaxes life from what is dying, she finds healing and a tranquil purpose . . . Meditative, wise, and worth revisiting, The Butter House is a novella about finding meaning in one’s connections with animals and in the cultivation of a garden.”
—Krtisen Rabe, Foreword Reviews
“The Butter House is a chronicle of cats, it’s a turn back to nature and the land, it’s an answer to the question what it means to care for something outside of yourself.”
—Brittany Ackerman, Write or Die Magazine
“The Butter House is like a lithe and seductive feline, sinking its uncut claws into you. Sarah Gerard’s prose is quiet and contemplative and then chaotic in bursts, also not unlike a cat. The Butter House incisively considers the simultaneous care and cruelty of pet ownership, and Gerard is masterful in writing into all the nooks and crannies of a relationship. It’s the tale cat people deserve.”
—Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, author of Helen House
“With precise and lush details, Gerard captures a sense of life’s fragility amid new possibilities. The author’s fans are in for a treat.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The Butter House is a gorgeous gem of a story, and for being such a small book, it certainly packs a large emotional punch.”
—Beatrice Toothman, Seattle Book Review
“The Butter House is a charming and surprisingly thought-provoking exploration of the myriad possibilities that domestic life can offer.”
—Erin Britton, Independent Book Review