Private Means unfolds over a single charged summer, tracing the quiet unraveling of a long marriage. When Alice’s beloved dog goes missing over Memorial Day weekend, she stays behind in New York City to search, while her husband Peter escapes to the Berkshires to visit friends.
As the heat builds, so do the fractures between them. Alice, unsure whether to remain in a marriage she no longer trusts, weighs the comforts of the life she has built against a growing sense of isolation. Peter, a psychiatrist weary of Alice’s distance and the lost-dog turmoil, turns his attention to his patients—and to one particularly alluring woman.
Moving between New York, the Hamptons, Cape Cod, and the Berkshires, the story follows Alice and Peter through weekends with wealthy friends, flirtations, and private doubts. Their separate escapes only deepen the questions at the heart of their relationship.
With incisive, often wry observations about privilege, desire, and emotional deceit, Cree LeFavour crafts a literary domestic drama that is at once darkly funny, sad, and quietly suspenseful.
- Intimate portrait of a marriage under strain
- Evocative summer settings in New York and New England
- Explores infidelity, loneliness, and the costs of privilege
- Ideal for readers of smart, character-driven literary fiction
