The Burning Side
A Novel
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- 16,99 €
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- 16,99 €
Publisher Description
From the author of The Bright Years, the story of April and Leo, a couple on the brink of collapse. When their house goes up in flames, family secrets and thorny histories emerge as they are forced to decide what is worth salvaging.
When April and Leo’s house burns in the middle of the night, they escape with their two young children and the quiet knowledge that the fire is not the only thing threatening their family. They retreat to April’s childhood home in Dallas, where her spirited parents and siblings provide both comfort and complication.
As the family reckons with the aftermath—grief, guilt, logistics, and memories scorched and intact—the fire exposes the cracks already forming in April and Leo’s marriage. The novel unfolds in alternating perspectives: from April, who feels the crushing weight of motherhood, marriage, and self-blame; from Leo, a high school history teacher shaped by a lonely, fractured childhood; from Deb, April’s generous and no-nonsense mother who has to contend with her husband’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis; and from flashbacks that trace April and Leo’s relationship from its earliest days of connection to the devastating decisions that led them here.
A family saga suffused with humor, longing, and heartbreak, The Burning Side is about what we inherit and what we choose, about forgiveness and the ache of being known. It is, above all, about the meaning of home and the costs of long love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Damoff (The Bright Years) delivers the heartbreaking tale of a family contending with its fractures in the wake of a devastating house fire. In the middle of the night, married couple April and Leo and their two young children emerge from their burning home with a few minor scrapes. Earlier that evening, Leo had told April he wanted a divorce, having discovered her infidelity months before. Now, he reluctantly joins her and the children at her parents' house, working "mechanically to prioritize our kids." The nonlinear narrative then rewinds 11 years, to when April, a tutor, begins a relationship with high school teacher Leo, and back further to the 1980s, depicting April's parents Deb and Billy's shotgun wedding and Leo's impoverished childhood. In the present timeline, Damoff offers devastating insights into her characters, as Leo faces his bitterness over the looming end of his marriage, exacerbated by the knowledge that he'll lose his close relationship with his in-laws, who have been surrogate parents to him. Meanwhile, Deb deals with Billy's early-onset Alzheimer's, which has turned him into "a shell of himself," and April faces the root of her slow-building resentment of Leo, who "hit his professional stride" while she was consumed with childcare, letting her "spend my days in milk-crusted isolation." This will stay with readers.
