by Bruce Wagner
First published 2016
Dusty Wilding has an Oscar and a carefully managed Hollywood life with her wife Allegra. When Allegra loses their baby, the tragedy pushes Dusty to confront a decades-old wound. At sixteen, she gave up a daughter for adoption. Now she begins searching for that lost child, determined to find answers to questions that have tormented her for years. The search pulls Dusty deeper into buried secrets that threaten to destroy everything she and Allegra have built together. Wagner shifts between multiple viewpoints as his characters navigate their individual traumas. Each revelation exposes new connections between their past lives. The investigation becomes a journey into the dark corners of celebrity culture, where wealth and fame mask devastating truths. Dusty's quest forces her to reckon with choices made long ago and the price of keeping secrets in a world built on public performance.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, contemporary, psychological-thriller, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: dark-secrets, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Hollywood
Period: Contemporary
384 pages · Hardcover · Blue Rider Press
Content warnings: mental-illness, pregnancy-loss