A life-affirming novel about family trauma and what happens when a wealthy Manhattan family takes a cross-country trip in an RV and realizes that grief is messy, but healing is messier.

CRAZY NORMAL
by Marissa Matteo
Crown, September 2027

When Phoebe Fields was six, her older brother Alexander died by suicide. Twenty years later, her wealthy Manhattan family still refuses to talk about it.

On the anniversary of his death, the Fields family—along with Phoebe’s boyfriend, their nanny, and their cook—set off on an ill-advised RV trip to California for a wedding. What begins as a chaotic journey quickly becomes a reckoning, as old wounds resurface, secrets unravel, and long-suppressed grief begins to demand a voice. As Phoebe tries to piece together who her brother really was—and why he chose to leave—she must confront the emotional silence that has shaped her life. But in a family where love is loud, messy, and often misguided, healing doesn’t come quietly.

Marrying commercial appeal with literary sensibility, CRAZY NORMAL, is a voice-driven intimate portrait of a family that learns you can outrun the past, until you’re trapped in an RV with it. It is perfect reading for fans of The Wedding People and the film, Little Miss Sunshine.

Despite earning an MFA from the University of Miami, a second MFA from UCLA, and telling her parents she would be the next Joan Didion, Marissa Matteo has worked as a celebrity ghostwriter and television writer for the last two decades. She has ghostwritten eight books, including three New York Times Bestsellers. She worked as a writer/producer on the CBS drama Bull for five seasons and has developed shows with 20th, HBO, Hulu, Showtime, Sony, and Warner Brothers. Marissa lives in Manhattan Beach, CA with her husband and their two children. CRAZY NORMAL is her first novel.