Award-winning author Ayelet Gundar-Goshen returns with a timely
exploration of the fault lines in a community, a school, and a family,
as a mother begins to suspect her teenage son of committing a terrible
crime.
Lilach has it all: a beautiful home in the heart of Silicon Valley, a
successful husband and stable marriage, and a teenage son, Adam, with
whom she has always felt a particular closeness. Israeli immigrants, the
family has now lived in the U.S. long enough that they consider it home.
But after a brutal attack on a local synagogue shakes their sense of
safety, Adam enrolls in a self-defense class taught by a former Israeli
Special Forces officer. There, for the first time, he finds a sense of
confidence and belonging.
Then, tragedy strikes again when an African American boy dies at a house
party, apparently from a drug overdose. Though he was a high school
classmate, Adam claims not to know him. Yet rumors begin to circulate
that the death was not accidental, and that Adam and his new friends had
a history with Jamal. As more details surface and racial tensions in the
community are ignited, Lilach begins to question everything she thought
she knew about her son. Could her worst fears be possible? Could her
quiet, reclusive child have had something to do with Jamal's death?
Praised for "instilling emotional depth into a thriller plot" (New York
Times Book Review on Waking Lions), Ayelet Gundar-Goshen once again
brings together taut, page-turning suspense, superb writing, and
razor-sharp insight into the fault lines of race, identity, and
privilege and the dark secrets we hide from those we love most.
