Mary Adkins

Mary Adkins is a novelist, writing teacher, and former lawyer whose fiction examines what people compromise when status and security become uncertain. A Duke University and Yale Law School graduate, her essays and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Slate. Her third novel, Palm Beach, sends freelance journalist Rebecca, actor Mickey, and their infant son from a small Queens apartment to the orbit of an immensely wealthy Florida family. Rebecca reports on economic inequality, yet employment, friendship, and a medical crisis make her increasingly dependent on people whose power she questions. The Harper edition followed When You Read This and Privilege in 2021. Adkins builds its momentum from moral pressure inside a marriage rather than treating luxury as scenery alone. The result connects family vulnerability with wealth disparity and asks how quickly an apparent opportunity can change the standards by which a couple judges itself.