AVA DELLAIRA

Author of Love Letters to the Dead, In Search of Us, and Exposure (September 2024)

One night, two people, four sides of a story.

In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and, after a chance meeting, go home together. 

Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend Annie is back in LA for the first time in more than a decade. As teenagers, Juliette and Annie shared an enviable bond, memorialized by Juliette’s mother, Margot, a renowned photographer. As Annie returns to the Topanga Canyon home where they spent their idyllic adolescence, she makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build. 

Spanning decades, from LA to Chicago, and told through Annie, Juliette, Noah, and Jesse’s perspectives, this powerful, provocative novel delves into one life-changing night and the complex lives and relationships of those affected by it, exploring how race, artistic ambition, and grief expose different versions of the same story.