First published 2026
Rachel Goldberg-Polin lived what she calls a "warm beige" life with her husband Jon until October 7th, 2023 changed everything. That morning, their twenty-three-year-old son Hersh disappeared from a music festival designed to celebrate unity and love. Rachel's world splits into Before and After as she realizes Hersh has been taken hostage. For eleven months, she and Jon work without rest to secure the release of all captives. Rachel makes public pleas that transform her into the recognized voice of the hostage crisis, while privately enduring relentless psychological torture. She fights to inject humanity into an inhuman situation. After Hersh survives 328 days of violence, he and five other prisoners are executed. Rachel must now navigate a grief so complete that some days she cries without stopping. Yet she also discovers that light can exist differently than before, sometimes appearing as "a whisper of sun" within herself and her marriage, even when the external world offers only darkness.
Genres: literary-fiction, grief, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: grief, resilience
Period: 2023
288 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: death, violence