Reese Witherspoon has selected a debut novel as the August pick for her popular book club.
The actor’s latest selection is Kelly Anderson’s The Wild Beneath, published Tuesday by Park Row. The novel follows Annie MacLeod, a woman who grew up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest whose life is thrown into disarray when a tsunami forces her to live on land. She meets a nonspeaking man, Walker, and is torn between him and her longtime best friend, Evan.
In an interview with Writer’s Digest, Anderson, a physician, discussed the origin of her novel. “I never planned to write fiction,” she said. “One winter morning, I was doing a three-point turn in my driveway. The sun was blindingly bright and I’d forgotten my sunglasses. I found myself imagining a story about metamorphosis. I think, in some way, I was looking for that kind of change in my own life.”
Witherspoon announced the novel’s selection in a video on Instagram, featuring the actor rating locations in which to read Anderson’s book. “On the couch” gets an 8.5 out of 10 rating, because it is “peak cozy” and “easy to lose track of time,” while “kitchen table” fares worse at 7 out of 10: It’s “great with morning coffee” but “starts feeling like work after 30 minutes.”
Also on Instagram, Anderson reacted to her book’s selection, writing, “It’s pub day…and magically, unbelievably, The Wild Beneath is the August Reese’s Book Club Pick.…Thank you to @reesewitherspoon and @reesesbookclub for making dreams come true. I hope you love this book as much as I loved writing it!”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
