The Third Option

By Beca Salmon

Book Overview

Semifinalist for Alternating Current Press 2025 Futurist Debut Book Award

Divorce comes for many of us, sometimes after years of quiet resignation or escalating fights. Sometimes after love slowly slips away. And sometimes, it's a trainwreck.

From the rubble, Beca Salmon shares a memoir of an unwanted divorce, a love letter to loss, and a fierce reckoning of how she was blindsided by the end of her seventeen-year marriage.

Set against a year of dark revelations-cheating, lying, and stealing-this book braids the raw, intimate details of a dissolving relationship with a deeper examination of the chaotic rhythm of the victim-perpetrator cycle. This dance is a tired paradigm used to create blame and hold people captive to harm. Those of us who carry a personal legacy of childhood abuse are offered two options as adults: be a victim or victimize others. The Third Option asks: What if there's another way?

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"The Third Option by Beca Salmon is a really raw and transparent memoir linked to change...written by a clinician who takes stock of her own life with absolute honesty." - Readers' Favorite

"A raw meditation on betrayal and agency in a marriage sustained by hope, silence, and the fear of letting go." - Independent Book Review

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GH9ZBXJP
• ISBN13: 9798891329775
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Atmosphere Press
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"