by Maria Hummel
First published 2024
Lacey Crane sits alone in her luxury hotel suite in downtown Los Angeles when she receives word that Edith waits in the lobby below. The two women haven't spoken in over four decades, not since a devastating betrayal destroyed their friendship. They first met as young adults at summer camp in Maine, then navigated the glitzy world of postwar Hollywood together. Their bond once rescued them from isolation and despair, offering comfort from public and private traumas that an optimistic world preferred to forget. Now, over the course of a single evening in 1990, they engage in a twisting conversation where each woman tells her story and reveals secrets kept hidden for years. Their narratives burn with atmosphere, mystery, resentment, and regret as the layers of their intimate friendship peel away to expose a story about the search for connection and the echoes of lost love.
Genres: fiction, drama, 20th-century, contemporary, adult-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Los Angeles, Maine
Period: 1990, Postwar
240 pages · Hardcover · Counterpoint