by Dan Chaon
First published 2009
Miles Cheshire has spent ten years hunting for his twin brother Hayden, who vanished without explanation. Hayden moves from town to town, taking different jobs and fooling everyone he meets into thinking he's normal. Meanwhile, Lucy Lattimore slips away from Pompey, Ohio with her former history teacher, landing at an abandoned motel beside a dried reservoir in Nebraska. She thought she was starting fresh, but unease creeps in as their plans grow murky. Across the country, Ryan Schuyler discovers devastating news that shatters everything he believed about himself. He abandons Northwestern University, boards a bus, and decides to build a new identity through dangerous methods. The authorities think he's dead. These three stories weave together in ways none of them expect, as each character discovers that escaping the past requires more than just changing locations or names.
Genres: fiction, mystery, crime, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Pompey, Ohio, Nebraska, Northwestern University
Period: 21st-century
295 pages · Kindle Edition · Ballantine Books
Content warnings: mental-illness