Sonora

In National Book Award finalist Hannah Lillith Assadi’s (Paradiso 17) fevered, lyrical debut, the daughter of a Palestinian-Israeli couple forms an intoxicating friendship with Laura, a Mexican American girl, against the haunted landscape of the Sonoran Desert and a blur of New York City nights.

Ahlam grows up in the arid suburbs outside Phoenix, where coyotes prowl and mysterious lights occasionally cross the night sky. Isolated and plagued by fever dreams, she retreats into a world of her own imagination. When she meets the enigmatic Laura, the two form an intense bond, experimenting with drugs, sex, and boys, and watching helplessly as a series of mysterious deaths claims their high school classmates.

The girls flee their pasts for New York City, but as their bond deepens, the intensity of their lives becomes unbearable. In search of love, ecstasy, oblivion, and belonging, Ahlam and Laura struggle to outrun the ghosts of home, threatening to undo themselves in the process.

Dissolving the boundaries between dream and reality, belonging and exile, Sonora is a stunning debut about the consuming power of friendship, the weight of family history, and the longing to find a place in the world.