Best friends Juliette Marker and Annie Ricci shared an enviable childhood bond, both mesmerized by Juliette’s famous mother, Margot, a renowned photographer who documented their idyllic southern California adolescence.

After a series of unexpected events, Juliette leaves Annie and California for Chicago, where, as a white college freshman, she meets Noah King, a Black high school senior. These two lonely souls enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and, after a chance meeting, spend one eventful evening together.

Years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released. He and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby when Annie makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build. Details of that fateful Chicago night more than a decade earlier come to light, causing all who love Juliette and Noah to confront the discomfort of conflicting truths.

Spanning decades and told from multiple perspectives, this powerful, provocative debut delves into the complex lives and relationships of those affected by one life-changing moment, sharply exploring how race, artistic ambition, friendship, and grief expose different versions of the same story.

About Ava Dellaira: Ava Dellaira was born in Los Angeles. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago, and then received her MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop after which she moved to Los Angeles assisting Stephen Chbosky, the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as an associate producer on his film adaptation of the book. Author of Love Letters to the Dead, Ava adapted it into a screenplay for Temple Hill (the company that produced Twilight and The Fault In Our Stars). She has since written In Search of Us and the upcoming adult novel Exposure.