Four years ago, Kathleen McCleary’s husband had a job offer in a consulting firm working for the Department of Homeland Security. They had been living in Oregon, which they loved, but, according to Ms. McCleary, it was one of the states that led the country in unemployment in the tech market, in which her husband worked.

“Working on antiterrorism had a lot of job security,” she said, so the couple and their two daughters sold their house and moved to a suburb of Washington, D.C.

For Ms. McCleary, leaving her house was the most agonizing part of the move: it was a 1930s Cape Cod style, only 1,800 square feet, but she adored it.

“It was so personal, because we had all the tough years of our early marriage there,” she said, meaning those years of being in the weeds — raising two young children and scraping by, while she worked as a magazine editor and freelance writer and her husband earned his Ph.D.

Adrift in a new town, Ms. McCleary asked the local coffee shop for a job as a barista one day a week. The rest of the week she spent writing her first novel, about a woman whose husband wants to move the family for a business opportunity; they sell the house, then she promptly decides to burn it down.

The result, “House & Home,” is a sharply funny, nicely realized work of catharsis that will be satisfyingly familiar to anyone who has ever suffered seller’s remorse.

HOUSE AND HOME went on sale last week, so go pick up your copy today!