First published 2014
Anna Madrigal sits in her apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, ninety-two years old and ready to leave life on her own terms. The transgender landlady who has anchored her chosen family for decades decides on one last journey. While some of her loved ones head to Burning Man in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, Anna has a different destination in mind. She convinces Brian Hawkins to drive her in his old RV to a desolate road outside Winnemucca, where she once fled a brothel as a sixteen-year-old boy during the Depression. Her caretaker Jake, former tenant Brian, his daughter Shawna, and longtime friends Michael Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton have given Anna the family she never had growing up. Now she must face the secrets she buried in Nevada's dust, confront the trauma that shaped her, and complete the unfinished business that has haunted her for seventy-six years.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, secrets
Setting: Barbary Lane, Winnemucca, Nevada, Black Rock Desert
Period: Depression, 1990s
270 pages · Hardcover · Harper