Upstate: A Love Story of Grief, Healing, and Hidden Letters

by Kim van Alkemade

A grieving writer. An abandoned bookshop. A secret love story hidden in letters.
From New York Times bestselling author Kim van Alkemade comes an unforgettable novel about found family, healing, and the power of the past to reshape the present.

Thirty-four-year-old writer Audrey Beacon is grieving alone during lockdown when a post about a bookshop for sale in upstate New York pops into her social media feed like a lifeline. Enthralled by the historic house and the massive barn bursting with books, Audrey impulsively makes an offer. Soon, she’s cashing out her savings, loading her possessions into her dead husband’s van, and fleeing Manhattan for the village of Schuywich, determined to outrun the ghosts of her past.

In 1956, it’s love at first sight when Schuywich librarian Hazel McIntyre meets dashing magazine writer Evelyn Cabot at a summer camp in Maine that discreetly promises a “different vacation for professional women.” By summer’s end, Evelyn has left Greenwich Village to move into an old farmhouse she’s bought in Hazel’s hometown. In her new column, “A Woman’s Place,” Evelyn writes about her adventures renovating a house, tending to sheep, and opening a bookshop in her barn with help from the woman readers know only as her “roommate.” Privately, Hazel chronicles their six-decade love story in a series of letters that abruptly end when they’re forced to abandon the bookshop in 2015.

Reopening the bookshop in the summer of 2020 attracts a quirky community of villagers who continuously interrupt Audrey’s An unemployed Broadway set designer. An ambitious teenage entrepreneur. A story-telling Adirondack grandmother. Then there’s Sam Rensselaer, the distractingly handsome representative of the agriculture extension. Past and present begin to converge when Audrey finds “A Woman’s Place,” in a stack of old magazines, but it’s the discovery of Hazel’s letters that brings hidden love and long-buried family secrets to light. Will Audrey find the courage to heal the wounds of the past—including her own?

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Books About Books, LGBT, Queer, Historical, Contemporary

411 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 27, 2026

About the author

Kim van Alkemade is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into eleven languages. After a career teaching writing at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, she now works at an independent bookstore in upstate New York where she lives with her partner, their rescue dog, and two feisty backyard chickens.

Reviews

[Linda Galella · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

It’s taken me almost a week to be able to write this review. The story is based heavily on author, Kim van Alkemade’s, personal experiences. It’s honest, heartbreaking, victorious and completely outside my usual comfort zone.

The pandemic has begun to overtake NYC. Audrey is home alone dealing with the symptoms of a relatively mild case. When her phone rings around midnight, rending her tiny walk up apartment, it’s the worst news: her husband, David, died in the hospital from respiratory complications. This is how UPSTATE begins.

In chapter two, Audrey has muddled thru the overwhelming process of negotiating end of life minutiae, compounded by the “hurry up and wait” timeline imposed by all things pandemic and NY State. Before the chapter ends, she’s made an appointment to drive to a tiny village in northern NY and view an unique real estate offering for an 80 acre farm, dilapidated house and a giant red barn housing a dormant bookstore that will need to be resurrected, in order to purchase the property.

Chapter three is a brief article in Mademoiselle magazine titled: “A Woman’s Place”, by Evelyn Cabot, September 1956. It’s here readers are introduced to the second timeline. Many more will follow chronologically. Accompanied by a series of letters written by Hazel, the story of this lesbian couple is poignantly revealed.

It’s not a spoiler to acknowledge that Audrey does, in fact, purchase the property and Red Barn Books. I do hesitate to offer too many more details of the storyline as it will steal some wonder from the reading experience. van Alkemade has crafted an atmospheric narrative that’s plush with intriguing characters, complex emotions, an historical review of women’s political advocacy and books; lots and LOTS of classic books.

Five chapters was all it took, 15% of this novel’s pages, to cement me to the storytelling. No pun intended, this is not a barn burner but it is pacing perfection. Totally engrossed by dynamic characters living every day life under extraordinary circumstances, I read the book in total, overnight in 8 hours.. Who needs sleep anyway?

Recommended for readers of books about books, sapphic fiction, not so long ago historical fiction, stories about strong women, family found, lost and found fiction, small town fiction, NY State fiction and well written, finely crafted, multi arc’d fiction📚

I received a copy for review purposes. All opinions are honest and mine alone.
Read & Reviewed from a NetGalley eARC via Kindle with thanks to the publisher and author.

[Mariel]

Upstate quietly broke me open in the best way. It's a beautiful and tender reminder that grief doesn’t have to be endured alone - that connection, even when it arrives unexpectedly and when we resist it, can be the very thing that heals and saves us. Through Evelyn, Hazel, and Audrey we see that living a full life means taking risks and listening to what calls your heart. Upstate speaks directly to the kind of connection and community we need more of right now.

[Suzanne Leopold (Suzy Approved Book Reviews) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Our lives are little more than an infinite series of random collisions. We need narrative to corral the shapeless stream of chance into a navigable river.”
This one pulled me in quickly with dual timelines. This novel has one timeline set up as letters and a magazine column which uniquely connects the characters with historical fiction events weaved into it. I don’t read a lot of books with a Covid setting but I found it reflective ,and it worked for this book. It is about grief, family dynamics and relationships.Heartfet tears were shed when I finished this one,

[Natalie Jenner · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE UPSTATE DISPATCH is a heartfelt and heartening tale of community set in a bucolic barn and bookstore in upstate New York during a harrowing time in recent history. Audrey Beacon, a grief-stricken writer and teacher, leaves Manhattan for the quaint village of Schuywich and decides on a whim to purchase and revive Red Barn Books. Her adventures as a brand-new homesteader and bookshop owner are complemented throughout the novel by a series of wonderfully charming Mademoiselle magazine articles written by previous owner Evelyn Cabot, who decades ago took on huge risks of her own. Author Kim van Alkemade surrounds these enterprising heroines with an array of caring and down-to-earth characters, and one of the many great joys of the novel is unearthing their decades of shared secrets and unexpected bonds. Brimming with richly detailed emotion and prose, THE UPSTATE DISPATCH offers a poignant, inspiring and triumphant example for everyone who has dreamed of an escape to the country and the chance to restore connection, both to the past and to each other.

[MicheleReader · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Audrey Beacon, 34-year-old writer and teacher, knows a lot about loss. Her mother tragically died when she was eleven, her father succumbed to cancer, and she lost her husband in the early days of the pandemic. While grieving, she learns that an old farmhouse, in upstate New York, with a former bookstore in an adjacent barn, is up for sale. It seemed like the perfect place to heal. Audrey intends to reopen the bookstore, and renovating the property connects her to some of the interesting residents of the small village of Schuywich. Among them are Wren, a Broadway set designer who worked at the bookshop during the summers; young Aisha and her grandmother Lulu, who share local history; and Sam, an agricultural agent who helps Audrey with her property lines and someone she is drawn to. The story includes a series of letters written by Schuywich librarian Hazel McIntyre to Evelyn Cabot, a writer. They are the bookstore's former owners. After meeting in 1956, the two women fell deeply in love. Evelyn bought the old farmhouse in Schuywich, and Audrey discreetly moved in, leading to the opening of Red Barn Bookshop. Hazel's letters continued through 2015, the year the bookstore closed.

Upstate by Kim van Alkemade is a moving book about love and healing. Audrey must find a way to move forward after the heartbreaking loss of her husband. The excitement of reopening the bookshop and the sense of community she finds in Schuywich puts her on a new path. The story of "longtime companions" Evelyn and Hazel is endearing. We learn about how Hazel's family history was also filled with loss and regret. Evelyn's series of articles, "A Woman's Place" in Mademoiselle magazine from the 1950s tells of her life as a single woman, with no mention that she had a partner - a sad reflection of the era. I highly recommend this captivating book about women creating their own way through personal strength and the support of others.

Many thanks to William Morrow for the gifted copy.

Review posted on MicheleReader.com.

[Kimberly · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

I know I’m probably in the minority, but I do enjoy a pandemic setting/storyline. Also, this novel is a book lover’s dream, a barn filled with books in upstate New York! Um, yes, please! Audrey, our grieving main character, flees the city after a devastating loss and buys a historic house and barn in Shuywich. The dual timeline really pulled me in, and I loved learning about Evelyn and Hazel (the house and barn’s previous owners) through magazine columns and letters. This is ultimately a story of grief, love, and second chances. It’s also a story about connections and community, filled with strong female characters (which, of course, I absolutely love) and the power of being brave and living your truth. This beautifully written, layered story is one I’ll be recommending to everyone this fall.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently the Bookstore Came With Sheep, Letters, Family Secrets, and an Ethics Problem
Kim van Alkemade’s “Upstate” packages a warm reinvention story around a much sharper question about what happens when somebody else’s private life becomes your material
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | October 6th, 2026

Don’t start with a phone call. That is the rule Audrey Beacon used to give her creative-writing students when they insisted on writing grief: before the call that changes everything, establish what can be lost. Then “Upstate” opens with the call telling Audrey that her thirty-three-year-old husband, David, has died of COVID. Her rule does not merely fail; experience makes it look faintly impertinent. “Who am I to dictate how your story unfolds?” she thinks, because the phone call is not only where this story starts. At first, it is all she has. Kim van Alkemade keeps returning Audrey to versions of that embarrassment. She is a woman who knows how stories work and discovers, repeatedly, that knowing how stories work is not the same as knowing what happened.

Even the premise seems to offer a recognizable route out. Widowed at thirty-four and trapped in a Manhattan apartment during lockdown, Audrey impulsively buys Red Barn Books, a used-book shop housed in a barn in the fictional upstate village of Schuywich. The purchase comes with a rambling farmhouse, a hundred acres, neglected stock, conservation obligations, and enough picturesque impracticality to make common sense file a forwarding address. Audrey tells the realtor that owning a bookstore has always been her dream. It has not. What she wants is a life so unlike the one David occupied that grief might have trouble recognizing her in it. The bookstore is less a dream than camouflage.

Much of the novel’s warmth comes from watching that attempted disappearance become crowded. Wren, an unemployed Broadway set designer with old ties to the shop, helps repair the buildings; teenage entrepreneur Aisha makes herself indispensable; her grandmother Lulu brings local history; Sandra offers bodywork and another vocabulary for healing; sheep arrive with no respect for narrative economy; Sam Rensselaer, the agricultural-extension representative checking Audrey’s property boundaries, introduces the unnerving possibility that attraction has survived widowhood. A few of these figures remain more useful than fully dimensional, as though Schuywich has been stocked with exactly the specialists Audrey’s reconstruction requires. But their collective function is better than cure. They keep requiring her presence: feed this animal, open this door, answer this person, stay alive long enough that somebody notices when you are missing.

Elsewhere in the house, another woman’s life has already been made legible for strangers. Audrey finds old issues of “Mademoiselle” containing “A Woman’s Place,” a column by Evelyn Cabot, who bought the farmhouse in 1956, repaired it, raised animals, and eventually opened the barn as a bookstore. Evelyn’s opening provocation is crisp: if a woman’s place is in the home, why should she wait for Prince Charming to provide the property? Her editors balk at “a single woman buying and renovating her own house.” “Single” turns out to be an extraordinarily efficient word. It is accurate enough to print and inaccurate enough to organize decades of misunderstanding.

That word starts changing as soon as Hazel McIntyre begins to write. Interleaved with Audrey’s contemporary account are Evelyn’s public columns and letters written decades later by Hazel, the local librarian whom those columns reduce to a lodger, roommate, or useful companion. Hazel remembers meeting Evelyn at Camp Kokatosi, a discreet vacation spot for professional women, falling in love, and wondering whether Evelyn was asking her to become a “roommate or your partner.” Two nouns, separated by an “or,” carry more historical pressure than a paragraph of explanation could. “Roommate” can pass through a magazine column, a family dinner, a property transaction. “Partner” changes the room in which it is spoken.

Read the three women for whom they imagine on the other side of the sentence. Evelyn writes for strangers. Her prose has to charm, persuade, make competence look inviting, and protect the premise that keeps the column publishable. Hazel writes to one person, the woman she has loved for decades, just as dementia begins taking their shared past out of circulation. She can say what Evelyn could not put in “Mademoiselle,” yet there is something sadder than simple candor in the letters. Hazel keeps explaining Evelyn’s own life back to her. Details that would be exposition in another historical novel become small acts of retrieval: do you remember this, do you remember us, can I put this day back where you might find it?

If Evelyn’s account were simply fraudulent, Hazel’s would have little to do beyond correcting it. But Evelyn did buy the house. She did climb onto roofs, learn husbandry, improvise a rural life, and build a business. A woman reading “A Woman’s Place” could reasonably have seen in her an enlarged idea of what a woman might attempt. Hazel does not expose those accomplishments as counterfeit. She restores the company Evelyn kept while performing them. The escaped-sheep episode, for instance, first survives as an amusing test of Evelyn’s rural resourcefulness; Hazel’s version puts back the people, loyalties, and quiet accommodations that made the anecdote possible. The event stays put. Its center of gravity moves.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates that better than Evelyn’s final column in 1983. “The truth is, I’ve always had someone by my side,” she admits, before calling Red Barn Books “a joint venture from the beginning.” Then the prose begins retreating from what it has admitted. Hazel is the “village librarian,” the woman who rented a room, the “constant companion,” the “librarian lodger.” The syntax opens the door and the nouns stop at the threshold. Evelyn can relinquish the glamorous fiction of having done everything herself. She still cannot put the love affair into the magazine’s vocabulary. There is no sudden revelation that the old column was false. It becomes painful because we can hear exactly how much truth Evelyn has managed to squeeze through without saying the one thing that would rearrange all the rest.

Audrey makes an apt reader for those evasions because she is professionally trained to notice construction and personally gifted at missing what construction conceals. A memoirist and former writing teacher, she thinks in point of view, scenes, beginnings, endings, and metaphor. Her narration often travels the same route: a physical object catches her attention, association opens memory, memory gets interpreted. Van Alkemade’s prose is clearest and best when that movement feels nearly involuntary. It is less remarkable for syntactic fireworks than for how easily it moves between the ordinary and the loaded: a book, a kitchen wall, a sheep, a wedding ring. Audrey’s problem is that she seldom lets the loaded object remain unexplained.

Particularly revealing is the compartment uncovered during renovation. Inside are Hazel’s letters to Evelyn. Audrey pauses over privacy for roughly the amount of time required to formulate a joke: “writers are by nature cannibals of other people’s stories.” Assuming both women are dead, she arranges their correspondence by date and reads an intimate life in an afternoon. Her tears are real. So is the trespass. What she discovers deserves preservation; that does not mean it was offered to her. The scene is better for refusing to make curiosity automatically noble, especially because Audrey herself is a memoirist. Other people’s lives are her subject matter before they are anybody’s lesson.

Afterward, van Alkemade does occasionally clean up after her own effect. Audrey chastises herself for accepting Evelyn’s confident persona, recalls that an English major should distrust unreliable narrators, and lists the people she ought to have questioned harder. Everything she says is defensible. Most of it has already happened to us as readers. Hazel’s letters have changed the preceding chapters without assistance, and Audrey’s explanation narrows an experience that was briefly more unstable. This is the novel’s most consistent weakness: a scene or object earns an inference, then Audrey arrives half a beat later to name it. I kept wanting the book to leave a few more things unattended.

Darker images benefit from being left alone. A swarm of bees first appears almost suspiciously ready to signify migration, collective life, a new queen, another beginning. Then a neighbor sprays the hive. Audrey finds the bodies beneath the tree, brittle wings crumbling in her hands, and grief flips into fury. Later she presses stingers from the dead bees into the palm Sam had held. A symbol the reader might have filed under rebirth comes back carrying poison. Nothing about the earlier image has been erased; it has simply become impossible to use innocently. That is exactly the kind of revision the novel is built to perform.

In winter, the same pressure reaches Audrey’s cherished fantasy of self-sufficiency. She has made herself so unreachable during a storm that nobody knows she is home. The survival novels she loved as a child, full of stranded children triumphantly living off the land, suddenly look ridiculous to a freezing adult in an isolated house. Neighbors eventually rescue her from hypothermia. The point arrives through the body before Audrey has language for it. Self-reliance is no longer freedom when you have edited every witness from the scene and there is no one left to know whether you survived the night.

More quietly, Hazel’s papers change Audrey’s relation to papers she has refused for years. Audrey’s mother died by suicide when Audrey was a child, and an abandoned memoir about that death has left her with a sealed police investigation report. An editor once urged her to reconstruct her mother’s perspective; Audrey objected that she did not know enough to claim it. Hazel and Evelyn make that old objection newly uncomfortable. Audrey can remember her childhood accurately and still possess only a child’s portion of what happened. When she finally approaches other evidence, the movement is less from ignorance to truth than from one defensible account toward a less solitary one.

Importantly, Hazel’s letters do not become scripture just because they were never meant for publication. Her estrangement from her brother Billy, his marriage to Mai, the McIntyre inheritance, and the prejudices that hardened family conflict into decades of silence acquire different contours once Sam enters the story. Hazel has remembered those years from inside her own injury and regret. Billy had another position; Mai another; their descendants inherit only pieces. A private letter may permit honesty that a magazine column cannot, but intimacy does not grant omniscience. Hazel gives Audrey more to know, including reasons to distrust how little she knew before.

That leaves the novel with a productive problem. Hazel writes because Evelyn is forgetting. Evelyn’s imperfect columns really did give women an example of life outside the expected one. Audrey’s tendency to make stories can trap her inside punitive interpretations, yet the answer is not to stop telling stories and sit amid shapeless experience. She has to alter the story when more life arrives. “Upstate” believes deeply in narration, perhaps too deeply ever to become harsh about it. People survive here by arranging what happened into something they can carry. What they carry is never everything.

Rather uncannily, the real history behind Red Barn Books repeats part of that pattern. Owl Pen Books in Washington County says its founder, Barbara Probst, left Manhattan and an editorial job at “Mademoiselle,” moved into an old rural farmhouse, taught herself to renovate it, raised chickens and sheep, and opened a bookstore in a farm building. Van Alkemade writes in her acknowledgments that a 2021 Book Riot listing led her and her partner to the property; they visited, learned about Probst and her “longtime companion” Jean Slocum, made an accepted offer, and were heartbroken when the contract fell through. The lost purchase became the inspiration for “Upstate.” The resemblance is almost mischievous: van Alkemade encountered a vivid public account of a woman and a bookstore, then made a novel out of wondering what any vivid public account necessarily leaves unavailable.

One boundary is essential. Owl Pen Books’ documented history does not establish that Probst and Slocum lived Evelyn and Hazel’s fictional romance. Van Alkemade’s acknowledgments call Slocum Probst’s “longtime companion,” but fiction is doing the imaginative work here, not exposing a hidden fact. To confuse those categories would reproduce Audrey’s own temptation: a few suggestive pieces line up, and suddenly the satisfying explanation begins pretending to be evidence. The gap is not proof. It is where fiction starts asking what public memory cannot tell us.

Precisely dated history makes Hazel’s June 26, 2015 letter especially painful. That was the day the Supreme Court decided “Obergefell v. Hodges,” holding that states must license marriages between two people of the same sex and recognize lawful same-sex marriages from other states. Hazel and Evelyn listen to the news together, but Evelyn’s dementia has progressed far enough that she soon asks again whether they can marry. Hazel later gathers the power of attorney and health-care proxy that had given their relationship legal force before marriage could, insisting that they have been “wedded” since Evelyn first drove upstate for her. A right can arrive for the country on Friday morning and still reach one household decades late.

Of all Audrey’s mistakes, the most consequential is assuming Hazel belongs entirely to the past. She and Sam enter the McIntyre house expecting history and meet an old woman who sees Billy in Sam’s face. That morning Hazel had been a packet of letters whose author could not object to being read. By evening she can ask where Audrey found them. Suddenly the archive has a pulse. More awkwardly, it has preferences. The reversal works because it changes less what happened than Audrey’s relationship to what happened: the woman she had been treating as recoverable material turns out to retain the inconvenient powers of the living.

Ultimately, van Alkemade gives Audrey a gentler reckoning with that inconvenience than she might have. Hazel does not recoil from her. She had helped choose Audrey as the buyer, recognizes a fellow widow, enters the community around the restored bookstore, and eventually participates in the larger story Audrey begins to write. Her willingness matters, but it cannot travel backward and make the first reading consensual. Nor does the novel seem eager to punish Audrey for reading. It leaves an uneasier possibility between those positions: perhaps preserving another person’s history and taking something from that person can happen in the same act.

Late repairs accumulate quickly enough that I could sometimes feel the novelist tidying the room. The right house contains the right letters; Sam belongs to the right family; Hazel survives long enough to meet him; an old estrangement begins to loosen; Red Barn Books thrives; Evelyn’s pseudonymous lesbian pulp novels acquire a queer literary afterlife; Audrey reconnects with family and begins writing again. Some members of the Schuywich ensemble feel similarly calibrated to her needs. Yet one obvious piece is left deliberately untidy. Sam is not handed to Audrey as proof that grief has been successfully completed. He remains possible rather than promised. David does not have to be demoted for another love story to become imaginable.

On its own terms, “Upstate” earns 87/100 and 4/5 Goodreads stars. Its strongest work happens in the distance between forms: Evelyn’s increasingly strained euphemisms, Hazel explaining shared memories to the woman losing them, Audrey’s unopened police report, a secret compartment full of somebody else’s words. Its chief weakness is almost comically appropriate to its subject: it sometimes mistrusts incompleteness and rushes to supply the missing interpretation. The Epilogue makes a better corrective. After Audrey has spent most of the novel reading Hazel, Hazel gets the final pages and writes once more to Evelyn. Audrey, at last, is somebody inside another woman’s account.

So is David’s ring. Audrey has worn the Claddagh as marriage, guilt, memory, and accusation. Near the end she slips it onto Hazel’s finger, briefly lending a widow who never had a wedding ring the object that once marked Audrey’s legally recognized marriage. Later Audrey asks for it back but does not put it on. She hides it with one of David’s Valentine cards in the same compartment that once held Hazel’s letters. Hazel imagines some future inhabitant finding the heart between two hands, one reaching toward the past and the other toward the future, and inventing an explanation. That person will not know David, or the hospital sidewalk, or why Hazel once wore the ring, or why Audrey finally wanted it hidden instead of displayed. Perhaps the card will have deteriorated. The gold probably will not. What survives will invite another story, and another story will leave something out. The ring will still be real.

[Jennie Kirby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book lover’s dream story! This novel follows Audrey, a writer and English professor after she loses her husband to Covid and has to start her life over with no family left. She buys an abandoned bookstore in upstate NY with zero experience and quickly falls in love with its rich history and eclectic strangers who show up with various ties to the property. She uncovers a sweet love story between the previous owners through letters and articles and we get a glimpse into their past as the novel weaves dual timelines between the three women. I enjoyed the diverse characters, historical and current political references and lessons in the novel. A satisfying cozy read.
Video review here: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTyL7QHRc/

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable, sentimental story about a young woman who moves to Upstate New York after the death of her husband from Covid. Audrey is a can-do person who buys a property with ramshackle farmhouse and red barn bookstore and although she is drowning in grief she sets about resurrecting the business and making a new home for herself. Interspersed with Audrey’s story is the tale of the previous inhabitants of the property, Evelyn and Hazel, forced to live secretly because of their lesbian relationship. I listened to the audiobook which was well produced with different narrators.

[Jill · Rating 0.5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for the ALC.

I am very upset with how this book turned out. The description was gold.

If I rolled my eyes any harder than I did during the last third of this book, I would have seen my brain cells dying.

The way the author did herculean feats to talk down to and preach at the readers. No, I won’t forgive the Loud and Proud Trump supporter just because he is a PTSD Vietnam veteran who has guilt about his brother committing suicide just because he rescued the moronic protagonist from a snowstorm. He never took the bumper sticker down. He didn’t do any effort to actually repent. He will vote for Trump again. This isn’t me speaking from a political hatred, this is an anger at a regime of politicians that have KILLED people. People are dead because of Trump and Trump supporters. Don’t talk down to me that I need to show sympathy because he has some doe eyed kick puppy sadness.

The contempt for how the covid conscious characters are treated. As someone who cared for and has loved ones who have died and almost died because of covid and covid like illnesses, it is an insult to act like mask conscious people are being “extra”, but the holistic hippy character is supposed to be seen as novel and onto something (holistic medicine does not cure viral infections, jfc).

Audrey is a fucking idiot. She is selfish. The only reason I aimed to finish this painful story is for the historical letters. The AUDACITY of people saying that it is always MEN who aren’t in the wrong and that so many women could have done the right thing to make amends. Fuck that. I liked Sam until he opened his fucking mouth making a remark about “going to some parade”. It was a pride parade for protest during the height of the AIDS PANDEMIC. WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO ENDURE THIS STUPID REACTION.

I don’t need to be lecturing about accepting and looking out for neighbors and each other in 2026. I am looking out for the vulnerable against the troglodytes in power; I am not going to be nice to people who willingly and proudly vote for laws and policies that hurt and kill people. When politics kills people, that is a line I draw and will show my teeth.

Hazel and Evelyn deserve much more and better. The cruelty of Notebook-ing the lesbian couple. The anger I have at making Hazel apologize for the fallout with her family. The ridiculousness of trying to make me pity Audrey for constantly overvictimizing herself and never actually learning when her privilege is pointed out.

I am shocked Ren didn’t catch a stray bullet before the ending.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable. Two timelines, a bookstore, great characters.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upstate is a dual timeline novel, primarily following 34-year-old writer and English Professor Audrey Beacon during the early days of the Covid pandemic in 2020 as she grieves the sudden and traumatic death of her husband David. One day, while isolated in NYC during the covid lockdown period, she sees a listing for a historic house and barn in Shuywich, under a trust requiring her to re-open the bookstore in the barn. She cashes in her savings and retirement plan and flees the city for the upstate rural town and quickly realizes that owning a bookstore and historic home will require a little help from her neighbors and other town residents. Interspersed throughout the book are letters written by Hazel McIntyre and magazine articles by Evelyn Cabot, the two women who lived in the house prior to Audrey purchasing the property. Evelyn and Hazel presented themselves as roommates to the world, but as we slowly learn from Hazel's letters, this is a love story spanning from the 1950s to 2015.
Upstate is a book about family, both genetic and found, and how grief can shape who we are and how we connect with others. Audrey is both grieving the death of her husband, but the loss of her mother when she was 10 and the death of her father when she was a young woman. She struggles to make connections with those who live in Shuywich, who are helping her setup her bookstore and it's not until a near death experience forces her to realize that even those who may view the world differently than her, they are still there to help her. The examination of grief and the process by which Audrey slowly heals and moves on with the help of the other townspeople was well done, and the character growth and development was especially satisfying.
Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this novel for review.

[Maeve Robinson · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me a copy of Upstate in exchange for an honest review. This was a delightfully charming novel. I love that it was loosely based off experiences of the author as well! I enjoyed the interconnectedness of the past and present and appreciated how the narratives perfectly interwove by the end. I will say I preferred reading more about Evelyn and Hazel's love story more than Audrey, but I understand that without Aubrey's perspective, this novel wouldn't have realized its full potential. My only critiques of the novel are that it still feels quite fresh to be writing about the pandemic. I often turn to reading as a form of escapism, and having to be thrust back into 2020/2021 lessened my enjoyment of Audrey's narrative at times. Also, while I agreed with all the political statements made in the book, I often felt that the novel was quite preachy at times. Perhaps those messages will make their way to a more conservative reader, but I truthfully think the vast majority of this novel's audience is liberal and queer like myself. Beyond that though, this was a quick and enjoyable read, and I'd gladly recommend this to readers when it officially publishes in October.

[Jenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Thank you for William Morrow for the eARC via Netgalley. All opinions are my own*

When I came across the book, it was the title and the blurb that caught my attention. I was also familiar with the publisher, William Morrow; I’ve read a lot of works from that publishing company. However, it was my first book by Kim van Alkemade , so I wasn’t sure what I would think of the story. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was going to like this book, but it wasn’t until a few chapters in that I realized that I was going to fall in love with this story. I fell in love with the story and the characters. When the story picked up the pace, I knew that I was in trouble, and once I reached the end, I had to think about it all. What a beautiful story.

It didn’t take me long to get lost in Aubrey, Hazel, and Evelyn’s stories. I liked the way that Kim wrote about the women individually but also interconnected their stories. Aubrey, Evelyn and Hazel were all such strong women; even if they didn’t realize it at the time. This isn’t a love story, but a story about love, family, strength, and starting over. At some point I got so invested in the story that I didn’t even realize how much time had passed. Of course, I liked that it was told from dual timeline. Even though I enjoyed all the perspective, I loved reading Hazel’s letters to Evelyn the most. It didn’t take long to see how much Hazel loved Evelyn. The letters were filled with so much love and emotion that I found myself feeling them when I was reading them.

I liked the way everyone made Aubrey feel welcome and tried to help her in any way they could. I can’t even begin to imagine making such a drastic change in my life. From the beginning of the book, Aubrey grew in so many ways, and although she was still healing, she changed as well. I think getting that bookstore is just what she needed. I’m so glad that I got a chance to read this book. I would highly recommend checking this book out.

[Sharon M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for gifting me a digital ARC of this wonderful book by Kim van Alkemade. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 5 stars!

Audrey is living in NYC during Covid, grieving the loss of her husband, when a post about a bookshop for sale in Upstate New York comes to her attention. She impulsively makes an offer on the rundown house and barn. She cashes in everything she has and heads to Schuywich. She meets a group of locals who bit by bit help her make a life. She finds a stack of old magazine features, written by Evelyn, the former owner, and letters written to Evelyn by her long-time lover, Hazel.

This book is just so immersive. Told through Audrey's voice in 2020, and from the magazine articles and letters decades earlier, we see history come alive through their eyes. Audrey is full of grief, and it's so heartening to see a community come together to help her. Plus, there's all the animal life Audrey becomes responsible for, from sheep to goats to bees. I was just always anxious to get back to reading all three different lives and timelines - all the characters just came alive. Added points because I live outside of Saratoga Springs where the author lives and works (shout out to Northshire Books!), and it's always fun to see familiar places when you read. Highly recommended!

[Ahaaha4 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to start by saying I absolutely loved Bachelor Girl and Orphan Number Eight by Kim van Alkemade, because of this it is hard to write this review. I am not sure if I did not connect with her new book, Upstate, because of things that are going on in my life or because it did not have a storyline that interested me. I love reading and love books about bookstores and women’s relationships so I am perplexed. After reading the description and seeing who the author was I thought this would be a solid 5 stars.

I seem to be an outlier on this book so I am going to chalk it up to things that are going on in my life.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I will recommend this book and will look forward to reading more books by Kim van Alkemade.

[Nicole · Rating 4.75 out of 5]

What a book! Admittedly I picked this up for the dream part of the plot- taking over a book shop upstate? Yes please! But the story was so so much more. Told in two timelines it’s a story of love and loss and the connections that carry us through. Really great characters, even the minor characters were something special. One of those books that opens your mind in a quiet way. A favorite read of 26 for sure!

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the Arc. I’d love to read more from van Alkemade.

[Erika · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Loss and grief; hiding part of yourself and the weight of secrets; courage, redemption, and forgiveness, for others and especially for yourself; the power of stories to heal us; and incredibly fierce, brave, inspiring women.

The universe dropped this in my lap in the exact moment I needed it, and I will forever be grateful for these endearing characters that will live with me for a long time to come

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC of this novel. During the COVID crisis, reeling from a lifetime of grief, Audrey Beacon decides to buy a homestead in upstate New York, which includes a bookstore that has been shuttered for many years. The property is held in trust, and the seller stipulated that the buyer must reopen the bookstore. From here, the stories of the current and prior owners of the property are told from two timelines and three perspectives, with overlapping characters. The stories are about the traumas we all carry and how they can keep us away from those who want to help us.

[Kellen Elliott · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

Audio

[Deborah Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Upstate
By: Kim Van Alkemade

Publish Date: October 27, 2026

Publisher: William Morrow/William Morrow Paperbacks

General Fiction (Adult)/LGBTQIA+/Women's Fiction

#Upstate#NetGalley





I would like to thank both William Morrow and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book. All opinions are my own.

Book Review:

I enjoyed this book and gave it 4 stars. It was an easy read and went fairly quick.

This book starts out as the pandemic starts and there are some triggers so beware of those. The warners are death of parent and spouse and suicide. This book is told in a dual time in my opinion. The dual part is through magazine articles and letters.

In the current timeline a young woman is dealing with loss of her spouse and isn't sure what she truly wants to do. One day she sees an ad for the sale of a home and bookstore. The catch is the new owner has to start up the bookstore again before the trust fund will allow the purchase.

In the past timeline you have a young librarian and a magazine writer who meet at a camp for lesbians. They become interested in each other at the camp and continue with the relationship afterwards. The librarian is going to move to New York to be with her new friend, but her brother isn't doing well at home, and she needs to be there for him. The writer decides that she will make the move instead and there is a home not far from the librarian and decides to buy it and do articles on how she fixes it up. This is told through her articles and the letters that the librarians write

The new widow decides to buy the house and bookstore with cash to start a new life. The book talks about her struggles with her loss and how to make the home and store work for her. She struggles but is able to make new friends along the way and they help her.

I like how the author writes and it makes you feel like you are there for all the struggles in both timelines. I like the friendships and relationships also. I would recommend this book.

[Kristin Kurek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upstate by Kim van Alkemade is one of those rare books that fortifies the soul and lingers long after the final page.

In 2020, Audrey is grieving the loss of her husband to COVID-19. Trapped in lockdown in her New York City apartment, she feels claustrophobic, isolated, and overwhelmed by grief. On impulse, she makes an offer on a historic property upstate that includes a bookshop housed in a barn, turning her life upside down in the process.

As Audrey works to reopen the bookshop, she uncovers the story of its founder, Evelyn Cabot. Through a magazine series Evelyn wrote called A Woman's Place, Audrey learns about the bookshop's origins and development. She also discovers sixty years' worth of letters chronicling the life-changing romance between Evelyn and the town librarian, Hazel McIntyre.

As Audrey uncovers the past, she sets out to right old wrongs while slowly healing her own broken heart.

“I hear the rusty squeal of the barn door rolling open. I smell the intoxicating scent of foxed paper. I feel my fingers brush dust from embossed leather covers. I imagine the hoard of words amassed like the treasure of a slumbering dragon, waiting for my sad eyes to bring them back to life.”

This book is exquisitely written. The reading experience felt immersive and deeply rewarding, as though the words simply washed over me. I was devastated alongside Audrey when she lost her husband, and it felt as though I moved through the grieving process with her. As she purchased the bookshop and farm, I shared her trepidation, hope, and excitement. And as the whirlwind romance between Hazel and Evelyn unfolded, I found myself falling in love right alongside them.

Watching Audrey risk everything to build a new life after loss was profoundly moving. As she healed, it felt as though something within me healed, too. Upstate is a beautiful story about grief, love, second chances, and the transformative power of books. It's a novel that will stay with me for a very long time.

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

*NetGalley ARC*

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially Evelyn and Hazel’s story, which to me was the main story. The history involved and the compassion in those characters and the absolutely insane things they all had to go through. It was my favorite parts to read.

It deals with the pandemic in such an interesting way, but in a way that I do think is going to be familiar to most people. The overarching theme seems to be grief, how each character has theirs and deals with it in their own way.

While I think Audrey’s story was important, I don’t think I needed her side of the story to be as long. I think it meandered too much for me, and her marriage that she was so devastated by sounded like a sham, with a horrible proposal that was basically for a green card and a husband who didn’t help financially in any way and insinuated that he had groupies on the road. But that was only brought up once and then she NEVER acknowledges those things again. And she’s also kind of a judgmental prick, she’s a total snob who thinks she’s better than everyone else and hides it behind being extremely passive aggressive (though I do think she’s starting to grow out of this a little by the end).

I am just being a little nitpicky with some things that stood out and irritated me, I loved a lot of things about Audrey, she’s wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted, even though the purchase of the bookstore was impulsive she made it work, she was good at fixing it up herself and took the credit for it. She really reminded me a lot of Evelyn and Hazel both, which I wonder if the ‘daughter I never had’ is meant to reference.

Overall I HIGHLY recommend picking this up, I will definitely be getting a physical copy when it comes out!

[Jennifer Nightingale · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for an advance reader copy of Upstate in exchange for my honest review.

I travel to the Adirondacks fairly often and have family up there, so the setting was a big draw for me, and Kim van Alkemade captures it beautifully. What I appreciated most is that she takes a familiar, traditional backdrop and centers people readers might not picture when they think of upstate New York, like Black homesteaders and gay couples. It made the region feel fuller and more honest.

The themes of intergenerational trauma and found family hit close to home for me. I connected personally with the way the book shows chosen community helping someone start to heal and giving them real support. I also respected that the author doesn't wrap everything up in tidy happy endings. She leaves room for how complicated emotions are, and for the reality that trauma and renewal aren't linear.

Setting the story during the COVID-19 pandemic was a smart choice. It's such recent history, yet it already feels far away, and we forget how precarious things were and how high emotions ran. That backdrop sharpens one of my favorite threads in the book: people can disagree deeply and still take care of each other. The common ground is character, and showing up for your neighbors even when there's conflict. It felt like a timely reminder.

On a lighter note, I loved all the details about the animals and the homesteading process. They were informative and genuinely entertaining, and they added a lot of warmth to the story.

A thoughtful, big-hearted novel that I'd recommend to readers who love layered small-town stories, found family, and fiction that treats healing with honesty.

[Anjali · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, rounded up. I think I'm an outlier on this book, and that's at least in part my own fault - I saw the description about a woman buying a bookstore, and I completely glossed over the fact that the present-day timeline was set in the first year of the COVID pandemic. Audrey's husband dies of COVID in NYC at the start of the novel, and in her grief she ends up buying a historic house in upstate New York that comes with a huge amount of acreage and a massive barn full of books to sell. Every other chapter, we get the secret sapphic history of the bookshop through Evelyn's magazine columns and her partner Hazel's letters reminiscing about their lives and relationship. I was very uninterested in the COVID aspect of this novel, but I did enjoy Audrey's journey to build the business and fix up the house through her grief process. Where this fell flat for me: I felt no connection when Audrey lost her husband; I felt like I was told how much she loved him, but all the information I received about him from the start made me wonder why the heck she was with him. I enjoyed Evelyn and Hazel's relationship, but the use of Hazel's letters felt clunky to me, though the juxtaposition with Evelyn's columns was skillfully executed. None of the characters really came to life for me, and I ended up feeling irritated with Audrey a little too frequently. I really enjoyed van Alkemade's afterword, and I will definitely consider checking out whatever she writes next. Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for a digital review copy.

[Alicia Girardeau · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Making a rash decision to pack up everything you own, move upstate, and purchase an old farmhouse with an abandoned bookstore? Man… I found Audrey extremely relatable. 😂

I absolutely adored this book!

Following the loss of her husband, Audrey impulsively leaves behind her life in Manhattan to start over in a small upstate New York town. As she works to bring an old bookstore back to life, she uncovers a collection of letters revealing a decades-long love story between two women, Hazel and Evelyn. As their stories intertwine, Audrey begins to discover that sometimes the most unexpected beginnings come from the most heartbreaking endings.

What I loved most about this book was how beautifully it balanced some incredibly heavy subjects with so much warmth and hope. Grief, suicide, depression, and loss are all woven throughout the story, yet somehow, the overwhelming message is one of love, community, acceptance, and finding your way forward.

I loved watching Audrey slowly find her place among the quirky characters who become part of her new life. There’s something so comforting about the idea that even when life completely falls apart, there are still people to meet, connections to make, and beautiful things waiting to happen.

This was such a heartfelt, charming read. A reminder that family isn’t always the one we’re born into, that love can take so many different forms, and that it’s never too late to begin again.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the opportunity to read this advance copy!

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was SO good! I loved the story itself, but the local connections made it extra special for me.

Upstate weaves together a present-day storyline with the past, revealed through letters and magazine articles. As the layers unfold, complicated family dynamics, forbidden relationships, grief, and suicide become part of a story about the secrets and pain we carry and the power of storytelling to bring the past into focus and heal our broken pieces.

What made this especially fun for me was recognizing the real-life inspiration behind the fictional world. As I started reading, I realized this was taking place just a little north of me. I had to stop and research. The author draws on experiences from her own life, and the fictional town was a combination of two actual towns in the area. Even Red Barn Books, a bookstore featured in the story, is based on Owl Pen Books, which is already on my list for my bookstore road trip series!

And now I get to attend the book launch at Northshire Books in Saratoga Springs, another bookstore on my road trip list. Talk about a reader’s dream!

I loved how the three timelines and their stories ultimately came together. Upstate is a layered read with heart, history, and a strong sense of place. The local connections made it even more meaningful, and I can’t wait to celebrate this book with the author at the launch.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[BooksInBloom19 · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

I simultaneously listened and read Upstate, and the multi-cast narration is really well done. The story moves between 1956 and 2021, and the way the past and present characters connect to each other is one of the things I loved most about it.
It starts in 1956 with Hazel and Evelyn, who settle into an old farmhouse in the small village of Schuywich, quietly living their lives together while the world around them assumes they're just friends and roommates. Then there's Audrey in 2021, navigating Covid lockdown and grief, who stumbles across a post about a bookshop for sale in upstate New York, in that same little village of Schuywich. After she buys the bookshop and begins to settle in, she discovers a collection of letters Hazel wrote to Evelyn in 2015, and that's where everything starts to come together.
Their stories collide and pulled me in. Friends are woven in and out, lives intersect across decades, and the whole thing builds into something really moving.
Kim van Alkemade handles some heavy, sensitive topics with a lot of grace here. It's a sapphic love story, a story of grief and healing, and very much a found family story. Hazel, Evelyn, and Audrey are three of the most resilient women I've come across in fiction recently. Parts of it are tragic, but it's also beautifully powerful. Highly recommend.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a gifted paperback copy of this book. All thoughts shared here are my own.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was eleven years old we took a trip across the country to see family in upstate New York. The trip was memorable—my family lived on a hobby farm in the country, in an old farmhouse. I loved seeing buildings and communities and hearing their stories (this is where the Olympics were in the 1980s…this is where the Von Trap family lived after the fled Europe…this was used as a stop in the underground railroad…etc.). Van Alkemade’s book does a remarkable job looking deeper at the stories of the people and places around us. We meet Audrey in March of 2020, at the height of Covid in NYC, as her husband is dying on a ventilator. In the midst of her grief, Audrey flees the city for an irresistible offer—to buy a farm upstate, complete with a bookstore in the barn. The only catch? She must become a bookseller. Over the course of the next year, we peel away the layers of both Audrey’s story and that of the farm she has come to inhabit. The writing was exquisite, and the story reminded me a lot of Rosamunde Pilcher—maybe the themes of community, or the way disparate stories and people weave themselves together? At any rate, I flew through this book and was so sad to come to the end. This will be on my best of the year, for sure. Thank you to William Morrow and Netgalley for an advanced reader’s copy. Upstate publishes on October 27.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine stumbling upon a barn filled with thousands and thousands of books? For a book lover like me, that's a dream come true! Audrey is a successful writer and professor living in NYC with her husband, David. They're young, in love, and building a life together when COVID hits. David becomes very ill, and Audrey's world is shattered. Overwhelmed by grief and desperate to escape, she impulsively purchases a sprawling property in upstate New York, which includes a rundown farmhouse and barn full of books. The catch? Audrey must agree to continue the book barn as it once was. She knows absolutely nothing about maintaining a farm, or running a business but she does know books, and somehow that is enough. What follows is a heartwarming story about starting over and finding friendship in unexpected places. Slowly, the people in this small town find their way into Audrey's life. As she settles in, Audrey uncovers the property's history through old letters and stories from the townspeople. We travel back to the 1950s and meet Evelyn and Hazel, whose lives are connected to the book barn in ways Audrey could never have imagined. Grief, complicated families, decades of regret, and secrets. Some of it is sad, but ultimately I found it hopeful. And, of course, it's a book about books! Highly recommend and would absolutely read more from this author.