by Caren Beilin
First published 2022
Iris Vega gets fired from her administrative job at a Philadelphia law firm—but not before stealing her personnel file. Inside, she discovers a decades-old scapegoating document that transforms her professional humiliation into something darker. Armed with her own redacted history, Iris begins methodically dismantling the systems that marginalized her, turning bureaucratic paperwork into a weapon of personal reconstruction. She tracks down every person who contributed to her file, confronting institutional memory with surgical precision. What begins as workplace retaliation becomes a surreal exploration of how documentation defines and destroys individual narratives. Iris will not be erased.
Genres: fiction, suspense, mystery, crime, contemporary, psychological-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Philadelphia
Period: contemporary
167 pages · Paperback · Dorothy, a publishing project