[close] Lisa Teasley's seductive debut novel is at once a thriller, a love story, and a meditation on what makes each one of us unique.

Ray Rose is a charming construction worker in Florida, plagued with guilt about a violent crime he committed a year earlier. Ruby Falls is a beautiful animator whose freewheeling L.A. lifestyle is suddenly derailed when she stumbles upon a bloody crime scene at the Laurel Canyon guest house where she lives.

Fleeing their respective home lives in search of reinvention, the two adventurers head for Alaska, where their paths eventually cross. The fireworks are immediate. But as Ray and Ruby, surrounded by their remarkable friends, try to settle down into something more domestic, a sudden accident changes all their expectations for the future.

With luminously original prose and a fast-paced, eminently readable sense of story, Lisa Teasley brings alive a diverse and vital cast of characters, who find the promise of redemption through their interconnected lives.
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