The Paper Palace
On a perfect August morning at her family's rambling old summer compound on Cape Cod, fifty-year-old Elle Bishop wakes up after a single sleepless night that has changed her life. Her husband, the painter Peter, is in the kitchen with their three children. Down the dirt road, in the cabin he shares with his wife Mary, is Jonas, the boy Elle has loved since they were eight years old. The day that follows alternates with fifty years of Elle's history: her tangled childhood between her brilliant, brittle mother and a violent stepfather, the friendships and betrayals that shaped her teens, the wedding that anchored her, and the choice she now has to make between two men, two lives, and two histories of harm. Miranda Cowley Heller's 2021 debut, set against the salt and pine of the Outer Cape, became a runaway bestseller and a quietly devastating study of trauma, marriage, and the long arithmetic of desire.
Where The Paper Palace keeps showing up
One of our editors' lists features this novel.
What you might want to know about The Paper Palace
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Across a single Cape Cod day, fifty-year-old Elle Bishop has to choose between her steady English husband Peter and her childhood friend Jonas, after the night before at the family's old summer camp called the Paper Palace. The book moves between the day and her summers there since 1966.
The Paper Palace was a Reese's Book Club pick and a New York Times bestseller. Miranda Cowley Heller's debut novel was widely covered in summer 2021 reading lists.
Yes. A film and TV adaptation has been announced. As of 2025, the project remains in development.
The Paper Palace was written by Miranda Cowley Heller, published in 2021 by Penguin Publishing Group.
The Paper Palace is 456 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Paper Palace takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
The Paper Palace is a standalone novel by Miranda Cowley Heller, not part of a series.
The Paper Palace is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
