Nikki has spent her life running from her abusive mother and the violent boyfriend she killed years ago, and now from his brother, Burke, just released from prison. Burke doesn’t know yet how his brother died, but he’s obsessed with finding Nikki and claiming her—and her daughter—as his own. Now she’s run out of room to run.

“Part meditation on modern love’s dark and often unexamined underbelly; part can’t-put-it-down-even-for-a-dinner-break-thriller, this novel contains one of the most convincingly and complicatedly terrifying fictional characters I have run into.”

—Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted

 

“A masterful exhibition in storytelling; a breathless page-turner. Ligon drives his narrative like a formula one racer. Buckle your seat belts and get ready for a thrilling ride.”

—Jonathan Evison, West of Here

 

“A wildly original love story, a ghost story, a tense and suspenseful story in which the wickedly talented Ligon channels voices—of the lost, the longing, and the damned.”

—Jess Walter, We Live in Water