First published 2022
Vega Jones loads her two-month-old baby into the van she grew up in and drives. She is leaving an abusive relationship with nothing else to her name. Her destination is a small Ohio town her late mother once fled, dismissing it as a place full of nobodies. That description sounds like safety to Vega. She plans to keep her head down. Instead she finds people who pull her in. Heff is a young deputy who would rather build yard art than enforce the law. Eve is a local farmer who survived a near-death experience and came out of it with a deep capacity for empathy. Vega did not expect to feel at home anywhere. But the town carries its own weight. Residents talk in low voices about a tragedy that happened in the woods years back. The more Vega listens, the more she senses the story connects to her own family in ways her mother never let on. Her mother kept secrets. The town keeps secrets. And Vega, still running, is not yet safe. She has to decide how much truth she can afford to uncover before the past catches her.
Genres: literary-fiction, domestic-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, mystery-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, haunting, intimate, introspective, mysterious
Tropes: found-family, healing-journey, running-from-the-past, secrets-and-lies
Setting: Ohio
331 pages · Paperback · Lake Union Publishing
Content warnings: abuse, domestic-violence