Cassie

A father dies alone on a bench that faces the wrong way.

Thirty-four years earlier, he skips the steps that squeak and leaves for work before his daughter wakes. Cassie opens her eyes to an empty room in an empty house. She skips the same steps, having learned exactly how to make herself small enough not to cost a thing.

While her father punches away every offered hand, Cassie builds a life by collecting small graces-the neighbor who teaches her to brush her hair, a fiercely loyal best friend plotting their chaotic San Francisco escape, and the man who finally makes her laugh.

Told in alternating perspectives across a thirty-four-year countdown-one life contracting, the other expanding-Cassie is a haunting, razor-sharp debut that asks how we become who we are, what it costs to refuse to change, and what separates the person who breaks the cycle from the one who becomes it.

Tender, funny, and quietly devastating.

For readers of Elizabeth Strout and Paul Murray.