Porter Square Books: Boston Edition and GrubStreet are delighted to present the latest installment of the Grubbie Debut event series, featuring debut novelist Sara Shukla! Join us for a celebration of her novel Pink Whales on Tuesday, June 4 at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition (50 Liberty Dr. Boston, Ma 02210). Author Jane Roper will join Shukla in conversation, and the author talk will be followed by a signing line.

Falling in with the cool moms of her preppy New England town might upend one woman's life, in a sparkling and sharp-witted novel about marriage, escape, and deceptively tidy little lives.

Charlie is already feeling adrift when she relocates to an exclusive town in coastal New England with her mysteriously distant husband, Dev, and their young twins in tow. She hopes the move will recharge her stalled marriage, and she wants her kids to feel like they belong, even if she's clearly a fish out of water herself. In a strange new world where summer is a verb and both the harbor and the partygoers are awash in a dizzying constellation of pinks and pastels, she's never felt so confounded or alone. She'll need more than a preppy handbook to find her way.

Then a trio of power moms--imposing, beautiful, and monogrammed--comes to the rescue, and Charlie clings to their attention like a life raft. As Dev pulls further away, Charlie dives into her newfound friends' circle of yacht clubs, rivalries, and bizarre theme parties, hoping to find her sea legs. She even dares to cozy up to a hot, barefoot, and aggressively flirty local. But if she's running from her problems at home, where exactly is she escaping to? Charlie is beginning to wonder. This ridiculous new normal--and her desire to be part of it--might just eat her alive.

Sara Shukla is the author of Pink Whales and an editor for WBUR's Cognoscenti. You can find her writing at WBUR as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. An alum of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator and the University of Virginia, she lives in Massachusetts with her family.

Jane Roper is the author of two novels, The Society of Shame, and Eden Lake, and a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived–and Mostly Thrived–Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins. Her essays and humor have appeared in Salon, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Poets & Writers, LitHub, NPR, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jane currently lives just north of Boston with her husband, rad teenage twins, and two cats, one of whom sucks.

Sara Shukla, author of Pink Whales, in conversation with Jane Roper