First published 2013
Reno arrives in New York in 1975 with a plan to turn her passion for motorcycles and velocity into artistic expression. She enters a world where artists have claimed the abandoned warehouses of SoHo and blur the boundaries between art and life. Among this community of dreamers, she begins a relationship with Sandro Valera, an artist whose family built an Italian tire and motorcycle fortune. Their romance takes her to Italy, where she encounters the radical political movements sweeping the country. There she becomes entangled with revolutionaries whose actions pull her into dangerous underground currents. When betrayal strikes, Reno must navigate a world of deception and violence. Kushner creates a vivid portrait of a young woman caught between art and politics, desire and danger, as she searches for her place in a turbulent world.
Genres: fiction, art, literary-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Italy, New York, SoHo
Period: 1975
383 pages · Hardcover · Scribner
Content warnings: violence