First published 2025
Nora Sheehan fires a fatal shot at her older brother Nico late one night in their Lodgepole, Colorado home. The thirteen-year-old refuses to explain why she killed Nico, who had been battling juvenile Huntington's disease. Her parents Angie and David hire local attorney Martine Dumont to prevent prosecutors from trying Nora as an adult. Angie cannot bring herself to visit her daughter in jail. Her marriage crumbles under the weight of grief and confusion. David calls Julian, Martine's son and a New York defense lawyer, to take over the case. Julian also happens to be Angie's former boyfriend. His return to Lodgepole forces both Julian and Angie to confront a tragic accident from their shared past in New York. The family must navigate their loss while building a defense for Nora, whose silence threatens her future.
Genres: drama, contemporary, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller, family-drama, legal-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotionally-intense, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-conflict, hidden-past, second-chance-romance, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Lodgepole, Colorado, New York
Period: contemporary
320 pages · Paperback · Celadon Books
Content warnings: death, murder, terminal-illness